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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





The Young Man From 
Middlefield 


BY 

MRS. JESSIE BROWN POUNDS 



St. Louis 

CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1901 

l 


THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

SEP. 20 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS ^ XXo. Na. 

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Copyrighted by 

CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1901 




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PREFATORY NOTE. 


The Young Man from MiddeEFieud was a 
serial written by Mrs. Jessie Brown Pounds for, 
and which appeared in, the columns of Our 
Young Foeks during the year 1900, and was fol- 
lowed with absorbing and ever-increasing interest 
by the great multitude of readers of that weekly 
journal. The story is now presented in this more 
convenient and enduring form, in the confident 
expectation that it will be heartily welcomed by 
young people everywhere, and that the example 
of the modest young man whose career it briefly 
chronicles, may have a wholesome influence on 
the lives of many. W. W. D. 

St. Touis, March, 1901. 




CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

I. 

Tom’s Departure from Home, 

7 

II. 

Tom’s Reception at His Uncee’s 

19 

III. 

Nora Takes Tom into Her Con- 



. FIDENCE 

31 

IV. 

Tom’s Interview With Geraed . 

43 

V. 

Peter Feoyd’s Strange Proposi- 



tion 

53 

VI. 

Tom Attends a Fashionabee 



Church . . . 

62 

VII. 

Marjorie Deane .... 

73 

VIII. 

Tom Becomes Discouraged . 

83 

IX. 

Nora’s Coming Out Party . 

93 

X: 

Tom Deads an E'ndeavor Meet- 



ing 

103 

XI. 

Geraed in Bad Company 

112 

XII. 

Tom’s Visit to His Home 

121 

XIII. 

Nora’s Ambition .... 

130 

XIV. 

Geraed in Troubee 

5 

140 


CONTENTS 


XV. Concerning Geraed and Nora . 149 

XVI. Tom President of the Y. P. S. C. B. 158 

XVII. Geraed at Hooeigan’s Haee . 167 

XVIII. Peter Feoyd Humbeed . .176 

XIX. Mr. Feoyd Quarrees With 

Kieffer 185 

XX. Tom in Kieffer’s Peace . . 195 

XXI. Tom Makes a Friend . . . 200 

XXII. After the Funerae . . . 214 

XXIII. Tom Becomes Superintendent . 223 
XXIV. Honest Confession . . . 232 

XXV. Mrs. Feoyd Makes a Discovery 240 

XXVI. A Happy Home-Coming . . . 248 

6 


The Yo\irvg Man From 
M iddlefield 

CHAPTER I. 

tom’s departure from home. 

T’s a good chance for him,” 
said Andrew Floyd, reflective- 
ly. “I would have thought 
such a chance the making of me when 
I was a young man. And Tom’s got 
the right kind of stuff in him, if his 
father’s any judge.” 

“He’s a good boy now.” There was 
more than the ordinary pride of mother- 
hood in Mrs. Floyd’s tone. “I hope 
city life won’t spoil him. Somehow, 
sure as I feel of Tom, I tremble when I 
think of the temptations.” 

“They must be met some time,” was 
her husband’s trite word of consolation. 
“A boy must learn to be a man, and we 

7 



THE YOUNG MAN 


can’t live our children’s lives for them. 
They must know the world and be able 
to fight its battles.” Nevertheless, even 
the philosophical father sighed as he 
spoke. It is easier to administer phi- 
losophy to other hearts than to accept it 
as the cure for our own anxieties. 

Dolly, the spirited little sorrel mare, 
tramped the gravel of the driveway im- 
patiently and neighed pleadingly as a 
reminder that it was quite time to start. 
Mrs. Floyd, having hurriedly dried her 
eyes on her apron, looked wistfully at 
the little brass-nailed trunk already be- 
stowed in the light spring wagon. 

The door opened and Tom came out 
of the house, buttoning his coat as he 
walked. He was a tall, broad-chested 
young man, with large features, a sun- 
burned skin and fine brown eyes. His 
mother and sister thought him very 
handsome, though neither would have 
said so for the world. The rest of the 
Middlefield people considered him a 
well-built young fellow, who would 

probably be better-looking when he was 

8 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


older. Thus widely do the judgments of 
mothers and sisters differ from those of 
ordinary humanity. 

4 ‘All ready, mother,” he said cheer- 
fully. “Hester can ride down with 
father. Teddy and I are going to walk 
to the station.” 

Hester, his pretty eighteen-year-old 
sister, clambered into the wagon quickly 
that the keen vision of the mother might 
not detect the redness of her eyelids, 
Teddy, sixteen, awkward and unspeak- 
ably miserable, kicked the gravel with 
more frenzied impatience than even 
Dolly, and wished he were a girl, so he 
could cry. 

“You won’t forget to wear your rub- 
bers in wet weather,” admonished his 
mother, gently. It is blessed to find 
relief in trivialities when our hearts are 
weighed down by real burdens. 

“Yes, mother, I hate ’em, but I’ll 
wear ’em cheerfully for your sake. 
Good-bye.” 

He kissed her, not gingerly, after the 
fashion of a perfunctorily dutiful son, 


THE YOUNG MAN 


but heartily, as if lie were used to the 
process and liked it. 

His mother threw her arms about his 
neck for one sweet, agonizing embrace. 
It was blessed to have him; it was 
heartache to give him up. 

But she said no word. She was a 
reserved woman, not from choice, but 
because her narrow opportunities had 
never given her means for the expres- 
sion of her deep nature. She felt much 
that the commonplaces of speech did not 
tell, and few even of those nearest her 
knew the depth of her feeling. 

“It won’t be long, mother. I’m com- 
ing home at Christmas, you know, and 
that’s only three months away.’' 

He kissed her again, and then he 
was off with Teddy. His father drove 
through the gateway at the end of the 
lane, and Mrs. Floyd went into the 
house and took up the baby. 

She could not have borne it, she was 
sure, if it had not been for the baby. 
He was such a dear, chubby, happy fel- 
low, and Tom loved him so much! He 
10 


FROM MI DDLEFIEL D 


had come into the home on the very day 
that the eldest son came of age, and 
Tom had laughingly declared him his 
heir. How her heart ached for Baby 
Walter! Just to think that he was not 
to know the presence of the elder 
brother in the home! What a dreary 
thought it was — that the breaking up 
of her household had come, and that, 
to her eldest born, the old farmhouse 
might never be a settled home again! 

With Baby Walter cooing on her arm, 
she went slowly over the house — the 
house to which she had come twenty- 
three years ago as a girl-bride of seven- 
teen. The whole of her uneventful 
life-story was written here. This 
bureau and high bedstead she had 
brought “from home.” The marble- 
topped stand Andrew had given her as 
a surprise, a month after the wedding. 
It had been a piece of reckless extrava- 
gance on his part, and she had told him 
so; but her delicate cheeks flushed with 
pleasure now at the recollection. There 

had never been a marble-topped stand 
11 


THE YOUNG MAN 


in Middlefield before, and she remem- 
bered the social convulsion which her 
acquisition had caused. In this wide- 
armed chair she had rocked all of her 
children — five of them, for one blue- 
eyed girl had been laid away in the old 
graveyard on the hill. It was almost 
ten years ago, but the mother could hear 
the fall of the hard clods on the casket, 
and the whistle of the November wind 
through the dead leaves, even now. 

Slowly she climbed the stairs, ab- 
sently patting the cheek of the baby 
with her disengaged hand. “The boys’ 
room” had always been a little republic. 
Teddy’s old shoes stood at the foot of 
the bed, still covered with the black 
earth of the bottom-lands. The tidy 
little mother sighed when she saw 
them; then she remembered that Tom 
was gone, and relented. Tom had 
always been neat, to be sure, but she 
could be patient with Teddy, knowing 
that she would be glad it had been so~ 
when he, too, should come to leave her. 

Here was Tom’s home-made book- 
12 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


shelf. He had not taken his books to 
the city with him. “I may not stay, 
you know,” he had said; but his mother 
had fancied that he was thinking of her, 
and trying to make the separation as lit- 
tle of a breaking up as possible. Here 
were “Tom Brown’s School Days,” and 
“Ivanhoe,” and “David Copperfield,” 
and a dozen volumes of history, and 
“Emerson’s Essays,” cheaply bound, 
shabby-looking books, all of them, 
bought with the stray earnings which 
had come so seldom to the home-keep- 
ing farm-boy. There were three or four 
religious books, too, and a few well- 
thumbed volumes of poetry. The little 
shelf told plainly the story of intellec- 
tual hunger, and of the eager appropri- 
ation of a limited supply. 

Mrs. Floyd sighed again. “I wish 
Tom could have had more books,” she 
said. “I remember how I always 
longed for them, and how I hoped my 
children would have a chance. He can 
have books from the city library now, 
if he has time to read them. After all, 

13 


THE YOUNG MAN 


his going away may be the making of 
Tom.” 

There was a bit of cardboard on the 
table, and the baby reached out and 
clamored for it. Mechanically Mrs. 
Floyd picked it up. It was a Chris- 
tian Endeavor pledge-card, signed in a 
bold, boyish hand, “Tom Floyd.” 

“I suppose it dropped out of his 
Bible,” she said to herself. “I’m glad 
he didn’t forget to take that .” 

She chanced to turn the card over, 
and saw written, in the same boyish 
hand, these words: 

“ God helping me , I will try to put 
Christ first in everything I do.” 

“I wonder if he knows what that 
pledge means,” she asked herself, “or 
how hard it will be to keep it?” 

She heard the distant whistle of a 
train. It was the east-bound accommo- 
dation, and it was to bear her boy away. 
She bit her lips and clasped her baby 
more closely. The convulsive move- 
ment was a voiceless prayer to God for 
the safety of her son. 

14 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


The Floyds were not poor people, 
rated by the standards to which they 
had always been accustomed. Andrew 
Floyd had inherited fifty acres of good 
land from his father, and had been able, 
through his own hard work and his 
wife’s careful management, to add an- 
other fifty acres to the original tract. 

People saw that his wife had the 
brains of the couple, but she did not 
think so, and, to be perfectly frank 
about the matter, I do not think that he 
did, either. He was an honest man, 
who saw no visions, but who lived 
faithfully according to his lights. 

Being entirely destitute of imagina- 
tion, he regarded conspicuous worldly 
success as a species of mystery, and 
never tired of puzzling over the prob- 
lem of how his brother Peter, who was 
his twin in body, but quite unrelated 
to him in mind and disposition, had 
ever managed to “get on.” 

That Peter had got on, no one could 
doubt. In his childhood he had traded 
slate-pencils at the district school with 

15 


» 


THE YOUNG MAN 


distinct profit to himself and distinct 
mortification to his playmates. Later 
on he had resuscitated dying lambs, and 
converted them first into personable and 
proper sheep, and in time into profit- 
able mutton. He had juggled his way 
through school, no one knew just how; 
had sold encyclopedias and mowing- 
machines until he found his way to the 
city and to more congenial employ- 
ment, and was now a comfortable lum- 
ber dealer, with an income of ten thou- 
sand a year. He was not dishonest, 
but he had “got on,” and in the eyes 
of his brother Andrew nothing short 
of hypnotism could account for the 
fact. 

It was this same brother Peter who 
was taking Tom away from the farm. 
“Send the boy to me,” he had said, on 
his last visit. “I like him, and I can 
be of use to him. If I am not mis- 
taken, he can be of use to me. Send 
him to me, and I will see what can be 
done for him.” 

Somehow, Tom fancied this shrewd 
16 


t 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


uncle, with his terse speech and his 
habit of success. Besides, Peter Floyd 
belonged to that great world of life, 
activity and achievement for which 
every young heart vaguely longs. At 
once Tom had been anxious to go. He 
loved the farm, the meadows and wood- 
lands, the sniff of clover and the famil- 
iar notes of the birds he knew. But he 
was active, and perhaps a little restless, 
and his heart cried out for the bustle of 
the town. 

“I am afraid,” his mother said, more 
than once. But he was not afraid. 
What young man is? 

The family discussed Tom’s prospects 
as they sat about the fire that night. 
The evening meal had been a dreary 
one. Poor Teddy had refused the fifth 
biscuit, something which had not hap- 
pened before since he came down with 
the measles. Mrs. Floyd had been on 
the verge of tears, and could scarcely 
have managed to get along at all had 
not the baby cried and given her an 
excuse for leaving the room. 

2 17 


THE YOUNG MAN 


The baby was in bed now, and Teddy 
sat behind the stove nursing his over- 
grown foot and his misery. 

“Tom’ll see a lot,” he said, gloomily. 

“I suppose Middlefield will seem very 
stupid to him when he comes back,” 
Hester reflected. 

“It will be hard to get along without 
him when the spring work comes on, if 
he should take a notion to stay that 
long,” was his father’s observation. 

But his mother said nothing. That 

is the way with mothers. 

18 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER II. 



tom’s reception at his uncee’s. 

om had been to his uncle’s before, 
and knew his way about the 
city, so he did not feel sure 
there would be anyone at the train to 
meet him. His cousin Nora was there, 
however, and Tom was glad, for of all 
his city relatives he feared Nora least. 

“Papa told Gerald to come to the 
train, and he didn’t want to,” Nora 
said, with that unnecessary frankness 
for which she was famed. It was be- 
cause of this frankness that Tom was 
not afraid of her. It is a comfort to feel 
sure that you know the worst. 

“Eet Dolph have your grip,” the girl 
went on. “You may just as well be 
comfortable while you can.” 

The colored coachman took Tom’s 
valise with a rather ungracious air. It 
was quite bad enough to be obliged to 
take orders from all the members of the 


THE YOUNG MAN 


Peter Floyd family, without having to 
extend his attentions to any of their 
country relations. 

Tom followed Nora into the carriage, 
and sat down beside her. He had no 
accurate standard of measurement in 
such matters, but he mentally decided 
that she was very pretty, and, further- 
more, that she was not nearly as pretty 
as his sister. 

She had a round dark face, stubborn 
brown locks, which rebelled at imprison- 
ment, and big eyes which seemed afraid 
of nothing in the world. Nora’s father 
was a diplomat, and her mother was a 
society woman, so her open nature must 
have come to her by accident, or through 
a long line of inheritance. 

‘‘Aren’t you glad to be here?” she de- 
manded. “The country must be stupid, 
except in summer. Nature is good 
enough, but human nature is a great 
deal humaner. I don’t see why one 
need make such a fuss over pigs and 
chickens, when there are folks. You 
have come here to work, though, haven’t 
you?” 


20 


FROM MI DDL E FI EL D 


“Yes, that’s what I want to do, if I 
get a chance,” said Tom, somewhat 
startled, but glad to get his word in 
somehow. 

“Oh, you’ll have chance enough. 
Never you be afraid about that. I sup- 
pose you are used to hard work, and 
maybe you won’t mind it. It isn’t 
papa’s fault that we’re not industrious. 
Gerald doesn’t like to do anything but 
paint pictures and play the piano. He 
does both beautifully, but then!” She 
made a little grimace. “I should have 
been the boy of the family. I like 
stocks and figures, and my hands aren’t 
a bit pretty on the piano.” She held 
out her hands, which were by no means 
shapely. “I’m a dreadful disappoint- 
ment. A girl is only fit for society, and 
I haven’t either beauty or style with 
which to shine.” 

“It seems to me you have pretty 
much everything,” said Tom, in such 
an honest tone that his cousin laughed 
outright. 

“Oh, the gold spoon is altogether a 
21 


THE YOUNG MAN 


fiction, I assure you. Maybe it seems 
to you that I have a pretty generous 
slice of things, but it won’t seem that 
way after you learn that everything in 
this world is comparative. My father 
has a little bit of money, but I have 
friends whose fathers each have five 
times as much. Those girls regard me 
as on the very verge of pauperism, and 
would give me their old clothes if they 
dared. A girl who has even a little 
money is sometimes at an advantage in 
the matter of dress, but I was born with- 
out the genius for clothes, and even the 
dressmakers regard me as hopeless. The 
designing creatures do their best for me, 
but I’m sure to look, in the end, as if 
my gowns had been made for somebody 
else. If I were a man, I could be a tin- 
peddler, or an organ-grinder, or some- 
thing useful. As it is, I don’t know 
what is to become of me.” 

Tom felt uncomfortable. Under his 
cousin’s girlish gaiety there was a 
shrewd worldly wisdom which seemed to 
him ungirlish and unnatural. What 
22 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


would he think if he should hear Hester 
talking in this way? He had often 
wished that his sister might have pret- 
tier gowns and more pleasures. Now he 
wondered if she were not to be envied. 

The carriage stopped before a hand- 
some modern home in a fashionable 
street. Tom sprang out and helped his 
cousin to alight. 

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said, 
laughing. “You’ll do it a great deal 
better, though, when you have practiced 
more.” 

Tom’s comfort was not materially in- 
creased by this speech, and yet he 
, thought the tone had a ring of kindness. 
Nora was whimsical enough, but she 
was true, and he liked her. 

Tom was shown at once to his room, 
for which he was disposed to be thank- 
ful. “Mamma always takes a nap at 
this time,” Nora had said, “and papa 
isn’t home from the office yet. You’ll 
have just time enough to make a proper 
toilette before dinner.” 

Tom unpacked his trunk with some 

23 


THE YOUNG MAN 


trepidation, wondering what a “proper 
toilette” would be. Fortunately, how- 
ever, there was no choice in the matter. 
He had two suits, an old one and a new 
one. The old one he wore. To make a 
toilette, then, must mean to put on the 
new one. The room to which he had 
been brought was in the back part of 
the house, and in the third story. How- 
ever, it seemed to Tom a very fine apart- 
ment, and he touched the simple belong- 
ings of the dressing-table carefully, hav- 
ing the impression that they were quite 
too dainty for every-day use. 

It did not take him long to carry out 
his cousin’s instructions as he under- 
stood them, and having done this he de- 
cided to go down into the parlor and 
wait for his uncle. As he passed his 
aunt’s sitting-room, which was on the 
second floor, he heard voices, and caught 
his own name. 

“He is my twin brother’s child,” his 
uncle was saying, with some spirit. 
“He must be treated kindly, Lucinda, 
as long as he stays in this house.” 

24 


FROM M ID DL E FI ELD 


“It was a mistake to bring him to our 
own house,” his aunt made answer. “It 
would have been simpler for us and 
more comfortable for him if he had gone 
to a boarding-house. But you would 
have him here, and I have only to insist 
upon a perfect understanding of things. 
One really does not know just how to 
treat him, you see. He is your nephew, 
as you say, but of course we cannot take 
him into things, as if he were one of us. 
I think it would be much less compli- 
cated if we were to treat him as an em- 
ployee, and much more suitable in every 
way.” 

Tom’s cheeks reddened, and he turned 
and walked quickly back to his own 
room. It should not be his fault if the 
relations between himself and his uncle’s 
family became complicated. Somehow, 
life in the city no longer seemed as en- 
ticing as it had seemed an hour ago. 

The dinner-bell rang before he reached 
the staircase, and he had no time to re- 
adjust his thinking. His uncle met him 
in the hall, and shook hands with him 

25 


THE YOUNG MAN 


cordially. He was a stout, short man, 
very like Tom’s father in general ap- 
pearance, but with keener eyes, and ail 
expression of alertness which was quite 
his own. 

“Glad you’re here, my boy,” he said. 
“Glad to see you, sir. Folks well? 
Yes? Ah! here’s your aunt.” 

Mrs. Peter Floyd was a large, blonde 
woman, with a great deal of coiffure and 
complexion. Tom considered her by 
far the most impressive-looking woman 
he had ever known. She extended her 
hand with a fashionable dip of the fin- 
gers, and majestically indicated that he 
might follow her to the dining-room. 

Dinner had been served before Gerald 
entered. He was a handsome fellow of 
two or three and twenty, with a figure 
rather slightly bitilt, but active and 
alert, and brown eyes which now and 
then flashed out of their dreaminess and 
shone with almost unearthly brilliancy. 
He had been away at college on the oc- 
casion of Tom’s former visit, and the 
two boys had not met since they were at 
26 


FROM MI DDLEFIELD 


the knickerbocker age. For some rea- 
son, Gerald’s career at college had not 
been satisfactory, and he left without 
having graduated. Tom looked at him 
now in surprise, and wondered how such 
a fine-looking fellow could have failed to 
make his way anywhere. 

Gerald nodded to Tom pleasantly 
enough, and went to his place at the 
table beside his sister. 

“You’re awfully late,” Nora informed 
him. “I went to the train in your place, 
for I knew Tom would wander all over 
the city, if he w r ere to depend upon you 
for a guide.” 

“Indeed, I would have done nothing 
of the sort,” said Tom, laughing. “I 
am quite sure I could have found my 
way.” 

“No thanks to Gerald for that,” 
grumbled Nora. 

Her mother frowned. “I do not like 
to hear you find fault with your brother, ’ ’ 
she said. 

“I’m not meaning to find fault,” said 
Nora, quite unabashed. Certainly Nora 

27 


THE YOUNG MAN 


was not afraid of her mother. Tom de- 
cided that she was even braver than he 
had thought. 

Gerald looked bored, and ate his din- 
ner in silence. Mrs. Floyd looked in- 
quiringly at her husband. ‘ ‘You remem- 
ber that we go to the Kirtland to- 
night ? n she said. 

“Ah, I had forgotten it.” Mr. Floyd 
turned to Tom. “Never marry a popu- 
lar woman,” he said. “If you do, 
you’ll never get another peaceful even- 
ing at your own fireside.” 

“Tom will excuse us, I am sure,” 
said his aunt, turning to the young man 
with more of consideration than she had 
hitherto shown. “I presume he is tired, 
and will wish to retire early.” 

“If he doesn’t, he can come down- 
stairs and amuse himself in the library,” 
his uncle suggested. “You are fond of 
books, Tom? I think your father said 
you were.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“All right. Help yourself to anything 
28 


FROM MI DDLEFIEL D 


you find. To-morrow we will have a 
talk about business. ” 

Tom was glad to avail himself of this 
liberty, and after he heard the carriage 
roll away he slipped down to the library. 
He was surprised to find Nora curled up 
on a divan, a paper-covered novel in her 
hand. 

“Oh, you are not gone?” he said, in- 
terrogatively. 

“I don’t go. I’m only a bread-and- 
butter girl, supposed to be learning my 
lessons for to-morrow. I’m not yet in 
the swim, you see. So there is nothing 
for me to do but mope here and read my 
novel in the corner, and pretend I care 
whether or not Madaline married Ber- 
tram. I don't care, of course, except 
that they’re both so stupid that I wish 
they would get married and punish each 
other. I wanted Gerald to take me to 
the Columbia Theater, to see L,ady Mac- 
beth murder sleep. A real tragic tragedy 
is about the only kind of fun I really 
care for. But Gerald has gone off with- 

29 


x 


THE YOUNG MAN 

out me, so I’m bound to be as miserable 
as I can.” 

“Don’t be miserable,” urged Tom. 
“Keep me from getting homesick. That 
will be far more sensible.” 

“Homesickness is a great luxury,” 
said Nora, reflectively. “I’m not sure 
but one ought to grudge it to you.” 

30 


FROM ML DDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER III. 


NORA TAKES TOM INTO HER CONFIDENCE 
o you are ready for business, 



eli?” queried Mr. Peter Floyd 
next morning, as he and his 


nephew left the breakfast-table. 

“Yes, sir. I don’t want to bother 
you, but I’d like very much to know 
what I’m expected to do.” 

“That’s right, Tom. That’s right. 
Now, then, I’m going to be right out 
about the matter. I shall expect you 
to work.” 

“That’s what I came for.” 

“Yes, I understand that. But there 
are different kinds of work, you know. 
Keeping books, for instance, is one 
thing, and loading lumber is another. 
Yoh understand?” 

“I think so,” said Tom, wondering 
what there could be so mysterious in 
the distinction. 

“There are different kinds of work, 


31 


THE YOUNG MAN 


you see, but they can’t be learned back- 
ward. If you want to be useful you’ll 
have to begin at the bottom round.” 

Tom was a little disappointed, for he 
had fancied that he was a favorite with 
his uncle, and that he was to be treat- 
ed with some distinction. After all, 
though, it did not matter so much, if he 
could fill a decent place and earn a 
decent living. 

“I wanted Gerald in the business,” 
his uncle went on, with a little sigh. 
“ He isn’t inclined for it, though. 
Takes after your Aunt kucinda’s folks. 
Well, shall we go?” 

Tom easily covered two of his uncle’s 
short steps with one of his long ones, 
and managed to keep his breath, which 
was more than could be said for his 
companion. Mr. Floyd puffed like a 
steam-tug, and laughed heartily at his 
own difficulty of locomotion. 

“I haven’t walked with such a rusher 
lately,” he said. “I realize that I’m 
getting up in years when I try to take 
a boy’s pace.” 


32 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


To Tom’s unsophisticated eyes it 
seemed that his uncle’s business was 
very imposing. It did not take him 
long to observe that Mr. Peter Floyd in 
his fine home on Bay Front Avenue and 
Mr. Peter Floyd in his office on Market 
Street were two very different men. 
The head of the Floyd Company was an 
autocrat when on his own ground, and 
expected that his orders would be scru- 
pulously obeyed. Tom was set to work 
in the yard with a crowd of rough men, 
and in spite of his ideas about the dig- 
nity of labor, he found that his pride 
was likely to suffer somewhat in his new 
position. 

He had learned that he would not be 
expected at his uncle’s for luncheon, so 
he made his way with several others of 
the men to a little German restaurant, 
where the odor of fried onions and 
boiled cabbage reminded him by a 
sickening sense of contrast of his own 
neatly-kept home and his mother’s 
wholesome cooking. 

At dinner he and Nora had the table 

3 33 


THE YOUNG MAN 


quite to themselves. Mr. and Mrs. 
Floyd were out, of town, and would not 
return until the following evening at 
the earliest. 

1 ‘I don’t know where Gerald is,” said 
Nora, who seemed at all times to feel 
herself responsible for her brother. 

Tom did not answer. Somehow he 
felt singularly embarrassed by Nora’s 
frank allusions to family affairs. 

He was tired, and went to sleep early, 
having first written to his mother all 
about his first day in the city. Sleep- 
ing heavily, he had no idea of the time, 
when he heard heavy footfalls in the 
room just below his. 

There were muffled voices, too, he 
fancied, and, remembering his aunt’s 
silver, which, judged by his standards 
of calculation, must be of priceless 
value, he crept very cautiously into the 
hall to listen. 

Some one was just closing the front 
door. “Nonsense!” he told himself. 

“What a dunce I am! A burglar 
doesn’t make that much clatter if he 

34 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


expects to succeed in liis business.” 

However, the mysterious sounds were 
to be accounted for, and he listened for 
a few moments trying to decide whether 
anything could possibly be expected of 
him. Presently he heard a door open 
and close, and then he was quite sure 
there were smothered sobs. 

But his eyes were still heavy with 
sleep, and the sounds had not been so 
distinct to his ear as they would have 
been had his head been clearer. He 
went back to bed directly, and slept the 
dreamless sleep of youth and weariness. 

He had almost forgotten the occur- 
rences of the night, when they were 
recalled to him by Nora’s appearance as 
she came to breakfast. Her eyes were 
swollen and had dark lines beneath 
them, and her hands trembled so that 
she could scarcely pour the coffee. 

If it had been .Hester Tom would have 
found some way to comfort her. But 
he did not feel that he knew Nora well 
enough to assume this privilege. He 
was, however, full of curiosity to know 

35 


THE YOUNG MAN 


the meaning of her distress, and to 
know whether it had any connection 
with what had transpired last night. 

To his surprise she followed him into 
the hall. 

“Go into the library,” she said. 

She entered the room after him, 
closed the door carefully, and stood fac- 
ing him, the picture of girlish misery. 

“I don’t know how I can tell you,” 
she said. “I’m ashamed that I have to 
tell. But I’ve been awake all night, 
and I can think of nothing else.” 

The tears came to her eyes, but she 
brushed them away impatiently. “It’s 
about Gerald,” she added. 

“Oh!” Tom started, not knowing 
what to fear. “Is he sick or hurt? Is 
there anything I can do?” 

“It is too dreadful to tell of, but there 
is no one in the world I dare speak to 
except you. Tom, did you hear any 
one in the house at about two o’clock 
this morning?” 

“I didn’t know what time it was.” 

“But you heard some one?” 

36 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


“Yes, I thought I did. Then I con- 
cluded I had been confused and mis- 
taken, for, really, I hadn’t made any- 
thing out clearly.” 

“They brought Gerald home. I sup- 
pose you’ve read about such things in 
books, but you didn’t expect to find 
them here in our house!" She brought 
out the last words with bitter emphasis. 

“Gerald! Brought him home?” re- 
peated Tom, not yet quite understand- 
ing and not daring to guess. 

“It is the very first time. I suppose 
he has taken too much before, but no 
one has ever found it out. He has had 
times lately of being lively and high- 
spirited, and then at other times he is 
very melancholy. I suppose that tells 
the story. Mamma humors him, and 
won’t hear a word against him. Papa 
is severe with him — too severe, maybe. 
But they don’t know a thing of this. 
That is what worries me. I went to 
Gerald’s room this morning. I had felt 
quite sure before, before they brought 

him home, even, for I had been watch- 

37 


THE YOUNG MAN 


ing for him to come in. It is a shame- 
ful thing to tell. It is a shameful thing 
to have happen. I suppose you will 
despise us, but we couldn’t keep things 
from you always, and I need you so 
much now!” 

Somehow, Tom had never liked Nora 
as well as he did now, when for the first 
time she invited his pity. 

“I am so sorry,” he began, awk- 
wardly. “If I can help you in any 
way — ’ ’ 

“I don’t suppose you can. Nobody 
can ever do anything with Gerald. And 
yet you’ve no idea how lovely he can 
be! He is a great deal more affection- 
ate than I am, and oh, so much brighter 
and cleverer at everything!” 

It was like her that, having found 
fault with Gerald when all others praised 
him, she should become his champion 
now. 

“Everybody has always expected so 
much from him, you see,” she pleaded. 
“You needn’t think I’m excusing him, 
for I’m not. It’s just as dreadful as it 

38 


FROM MI DDLEFIELD 


can be, and the world will never, never 
be the same again.” 

She flung herself upon a sofa and 
cried passionately. Torn was helpless, 
and sat in silence until the storm passed 
over. 

“I’m ashamed that you should see me 
cry,” she said at last. “I don’t do it 
once a year. But nothing so dreadful 
as this has ever happened to us before. 
There is just one thing to be done. 
Papa must be told, and told in such a 
way that he won’t cast Gerald off alto- 
gether. And — I can’t tell him.” 

Tom was stricken dumb. There was 
no mistaking the meaning of her words. 
She wished him to go to his uncle with 
the dreadful story. How could he? His 
uncle would be very angry, either with 
Gerald or with him, according to 
whether he believed or disbelieved the 
story. But this was not the worst. To 
interfere in the affairs of his uncle’s 
family seemed to him a course lacking 
both in wisdom and in delicacy. If he 
had been the only member of the house- 


THE YOUNG MAN 


hold who knew of Gerald’s condition, 
the case would, of course, have been 
altogether different. But Nora knew. 

“It seems to me that it would be 
a great deal better for you to tell your 
father,” he said. 

Nora shook her head. “I dare not,” 
she said. “I’m too quick-tempered, 
and I would be sure to say something 
that would stir papa up. I don’t dare 
trust myself, for if Gerald is let go now 
he will go to the very bottom. And we 
can’t let him do that.” 

Was she right? 

“Can I see Gerald?” Tom asked. 

“It wouldn’t do you a bit of good. 
He is still asleep. You won’t disap- 
point me, will you, Tom?” 

“I’ll try not to,” he said, and he went 
away feeling that he must do the best 
he could, not only for Gerald, but also 
for Nora. 

The day did not go as well as the one 
before had gone. Tom, with his mind 
on Gerald, was absent and awkward, 
and once the foreman spoke to him 

40 


FROM MI DDL EFIEL D 


sharply, recalling his wandering wits. 
He had never before worked under a 
stranger, and he had all the boyish in- 
dependence that belongs to two and 
twenty. He did not like to be 
“bossed,” he told himself. Then he 
reflected that perhaps no one else likes 
it especially well, and that he might 
as well submit along with the rest of 
humanity. 

He returned to his uncle’s home that 
night more thoroughly homesick than 
he had been before. His uncle and 
aunt had not yet returned, the maid told 
him, and of this he could not help being 
glad. He went at once to his room, 
and found there a letter from his mother. 

He had not hoped to have it before 
Saturday, and his eyes glowed at the 
sight! It was a hasty note, written in 
pencil, and inclosing a sample of goods 
which she wished to have matched. He 
did not know then that the errand was 
only an excuse for writing to him in the 
first days of his homesickness, but he 

41 


THE YOUNG MAN 


guessed it long afterward, and blessed 
her for her tact and love. 

Womanlike, she had put the letter 
into the postscript, which was this: 

“We miss you more than I have the heart to 
tell, and talk about nothing but your coming 
home at Christmas. You have been a good boy to 
your folks, and I am sure you will always do what 
is right. I send you your Christian Endeavor 
pledge-card. I think you must have left it by 
mistake.” 

Tom took the card from the envelope, 
and read on the reverse side these 
words: 

“I promise that, God helping me, I 
will try to put Christ first in everything 
I do.” 

Ah, what a hard pledge it was that 
he had made! 


42 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER IV. 

TOM’S INTERVIEW WITH GERARD. 


OM made a hasty toilet, and then 
went to Gerald’s room. He felt 
that much depended upon hav- 
ing a talk with his cousin before his 
uncle’s return. If he must go to his 
uncle, he must; but there was a better 
way, and he would find it if he could. 

He knocked, and, receiving no re- 
sponse, he boldly opened the door and 
walked in. Gerald was dressed, and 
lying on a couch between the windows. 
He looked up with a slight movement of 
the eyebrows, which might have been 
intended for a nod, as Tom entered. 
Then he turned his face to the wall. 

Tom was surprised to see that the 
room was the most luxurious in the 
house. Soft-colored Oriental rugs were 
spread upon the floor, and another of 
these covered the couch on which Ger- 
ald lay. The walls were lined with pict- 


THE YOUNG MAN 


ures, and delicate bric-a-brac crowded 
the mantel. Tom knew nothing of the 
value of these things, but their beauty 
impressed him, and he recalled what 
Nora had said about Gerald’s being hu- 
mored by his mother. Evidently, spend- 
ing-money had been plentiful with the 
only son of the house. 

Now that he was here, Tom felt de- 
cidedly ill at ease. Gerald showed no 
disposition to notice his presence fur- 
ther, and he wondered whether he had 
been wise in coming. And yet he felt 
sure that there was a way! 

“You are not well?” he blundered at 
last, feeling that he must begin some- 
where. 

“I’m not sick.” The tone was sharp 
— sharper, perhaps, than the speaker 
had intended, for he immediately added, 
in a milder tone, “I’ve got a beastly 
headache — that’s all.” 

What could be done? Tom knew not. 
But unconsciously to himself he was 
being helped by that longing for confes- 

44 


FROM MI DDLEFIEL D 


sion which comes with a sinner’s first 
real agony of shame and remorse. 

Gerald suddenly turned his head. 
“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he mut- 
tered, more to himself than to Tom. 

“Don’t feel that way,” Tom stam- 
mered. He did not mean just this. In- 
deed, he felt that it was probably a very 
wholesome way for Gerald to feel, under 
the circumstances. But the thought 
uppermost in his mind was that the 
prodigal must be kept from despair and 
encouraged to repentance. 

“You don’t know anything about it.” 

There was a long silence, and Tom 
was beginning to be afraid he must be- 
gin again, when Gerald broke out: “A 
fellow of your sort can’t understand. 
You are so phlegmatic and matter-of- 
fact, you know. You can’t imagine 
how one of the sensitive, emotional kind 
is swept off his feet.” 

Tom tried to regard this argument as 
conclusive, but the attempt was not suc- 
cessful. He remembered that some of 
the great literary characters of the world 

45 


THE YOUNG MAN 


have been excused in similar sins on the 
ground of their sensitiveness and emo- 
tions, but, being phlegmatic and matter- 
of-fact, the excuse did not present itself 
to his mind as altogether satisfactory. 
He thought, indeed, that the great liter- 
ary characters ought to have been 
ashamed of themselves. His instinct 
told him that the less he talked just now, 
the more Gerald would be likely to talk. 
So he waited. 

“Other fellows take twice as much 
and keep their equilibrium, ” his cousin 
broke out again. “They are the worse 
for it in the end, I suppose, but they 
don’t make such spectacles of them- 
selves. Oh, I might better be dead and 
done with it!” 

“Don’t say that.” 

“I tell you, you don’t know a thing 
about it. You don’t know what it is to 
loathe yourself and to have others loathe 
you. See here, Tom, there’s just one 
thing you can do for me — keep all this 
from father’s ears.” 

Tom was silent. He had expected 

46 


FROM MI DDL EFIEL D 


this request. He had not expected that 
it would be so hard to refuse it. 

“He has no patience with me,” Ger- 
ald went on, tossing the hair back from 
his forehead in a fashion he had when 
disturbed. “He is disappointed in me 
because I hate business and won’t tie 
myself down to anything. He detests 
what he calls ‘daubing and banging’ — 
by which he means painting pictures and 
playing the piano. I had trouble at col- 
lege. No matter what it was, only that 
it was nothing of this sort. It was sim- 
ply a piece of boyish insubordination 
and bravado. But I was sent about my 
business, and father was very hot. He 
said that if I wouldn’t study and behave 
myself at school, I must earn my living. 
I did try sitting around the office for a 
few mornings, but what was the use? I 
wasn’t made for that sort of thing, and 
so I got back to the daubing and bang- 
ing.” 

There was a long silence, then — “It 
has never been like this before!” Gerald 
cried out, fiercely. “I don’t deny that 

47 


THE YOUNG MAN 


I’ve tasted the stuff before, but I never 
was like this before. On my honor, I 
never was.” 

“So Nora says,” agreed Tom, cau- 
tiously. 

“So you’ve been talking it over with 
Nora! She’s always down on me.” 

“She’s not down on you now, but 
she’s very miserable.” 

“Miserable! I tell you I’m the one 
that’s miserable. You and Nora don’t 
know anything about it. But you won’t 
tell father, Tom?” 

Tom set his lips firmly. “I must,” 
he said. 

Gerald gave something between a snap 
and a groan. “I hate ‘must,’ ” he said. 
“It’s an ugly word. I suppose you 
think you’ll set father against me, and 
have things all your own way.” 

Tom’s cheeks reddened. Nora was 
mistaken in thinking she had all the 
quick temper of the family. But he 
controlled himself, and said, quietly: 

“The only chance for you is for your 
father to know. Nora and I would be 

48 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


cowards to keep it from him if there 
were not a better way for hitn to learn 
it. But there is. You must tell him 
yourself.’ ’ 

“Never!” cried Gerald, sitting bolt 
upright and flinging his pillows left and 
right. “What do you think I am made 
of ? I would put a hot coal to my lips 
before I would tell my father what I 
have done.” 

“It is the best way,” said Tom, a lit- 
tle more firmly than he had spoken be- 
fore. “You need him, and he needs to 
know everything. It is your place to 
tell him, but if you don’t, I shall.” 

“Tell him, then,” said Gerald, sul- 
lenly. 

The dinner-bell rang, but Tom waited. 

“Must I?” he said. 

“If you want to be so mean.” 

Tom rose. 

“Don’t go,” Gerald said, in an altered 
tone. “Don’t turn your back on a poor 
wretch that way — don’t ! It’s the last 
thing I’ll ever ask of you, Tom. I’ll be 
a man; indeed, I will! And I’ll show 

4 49 


THE YOUNG MAN 


you that I remember. Don’t turn your 
back on me now.” 

The tremulous voice with the sugges- 
tion of tears in it had a singular effect 
on Tom Hester’s voice sometimes 
trembled in this way, and when it did 
Tom always gave in to her, even against 
his better judgment. But now he dared 
not yield an inch. 

“This is your chance, Gerald,” he 
said, with an earnestness which sur- 
prised himself. “You can quit now, 
and be a man, as you say. But you 
can’t begin being a man by deceiving 
your father. I’ll do anything that’s 
honest to help you, but I won’t help you 
to do that. Tell him the story straight 
out, and begin all over again.” 

Gerald had lapsed into sullenness, and 
did not answer. 

Tom paused, with his hand upon the 
door. “I’ll come in the morning, and 
find out whether I need to tell,” he said. 

Gerald smiled grimly to himself as he 
turned his face to the wall. “I’ll throw 

50 


FROM MI DDL E FI EL D 


him off the track, and make him believe 
I’ve told,” he said. 

But the very next moment the agony 
of remorse returned. He hated the being 
he had made himself through his sin. 
He wanted — yes, he meant — to start 
over and be a man. And Tom’s words 
came back, “You can’t begin by deceiv- 
ing your father.” 

He hoped his father would not come 
until to-morrow. His head would be 
clearer then, and perhaps it would be 
easier to speak. Certainly, he could not 
tell him to-night. 

Before dinner was over, however, his 
father came, and when he left the table 
Nora sent him to Gerald’s room. Ger- 
ald, who heard her voice in the hall, de- 
cided that this was pure maliciousness 
on Nora’s part. In truth, the girl meant 
to prepare the way for what Tom should 
say to her father on the morrow. He 
would be more likely to believe the 
story, and, at the same time, to deal 
gently with Gerald, if he could see him 
now. 


51 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“Headache again?’’ inquired Mr. 
Peter Floyd, rather severely. Nature 
had not blessed him with a gift for the 
sick-room, and he had habitually culti- 
vated severity in the presence of his son. 

“Yes.” 

“You need more exercise. Stooping 
over paints and such stuff is enough to 
give anybody headaches.” 

This was not a promising beginning. 
Gerald vowed he would never tell, and 
then the loathing of himself came back, 
and he longed to make a clean breast of 
it all. 

He was silent for a moment, then he 
said, almost defiantly, “This is worse 
than a headache. I was out with the 
boys last night, and I drank too much.” 

Peter Floyd rose, his face red, and his 
voice choked with anger. 

“That settles it,” he said. “I’ve 
done the last thing for you that I will 
ever do.” 


52 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER V. 


PETER FEOYD’S STRANGE PROPOSITION. 



hope you are satisfied now,” 
Gerald told Tom the next morn- 
ing. “You’ve got father to 
order me out of doors, and I suppose you 
feel better.” Gerald was quite able to 
make himself believe, for the moment, 
that Tom was more to blame for the 
present state of affairs than was he him- 
self. 


“I’m very sorry matters have come 
out so,” Tom agreed, “but I can’t see 
why the right way isn’t always the best 
way.” 

“And I can’t see why the best way 
isn’t always the right way,’’ responded 
Gerald, irritably. “Father has kicked 
me out of the house on account of your 
precious ‘right way,’ and now I’ve noth- 
ing for it but to go to the dogs as fast as 
possible. ’ ’ 

Tom felt the injustice of this, yet he 

53 




THE YOUNG MAN 


feared that, with all his good intentions, 
he had blundered, and made matters 
worse for his cousin. Perhaps it would 
have been 'best if he had first gone him- 
self to his uncle, and prepared the way 
for Gerald’s confession — if such it could 
be called. 

“I’ll have a talk with uncle,” Tom 
said, at length. He did not relish the 
prospect, but he could see no other way. 

“Much good it will do you. He’s at 
white heat now, and your head will 
come off along with mine. Not but 
what you deserve that" Gerald added, 
savagely. 

Tom did go to his uncle that very 
night. “I’ve come to talk to you about 
Gerald,” he said. 

“Then you may as well go away 
again,” Peter Floyd answered, promptly. 
He had been pacing the floor in the 
library, but now he stopped in his 
march, turned about suddenly, and faced 
Tom. “Did Gerald send you here?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Because he needn’t. I’ll have no 

54 


FROM M I DDLEFIELD 


go-betweens in my family. I will deal 
with my son as I think best, and I will 
have no interference from anyone.” 

Mr. Peter Floyd was not in reality 
quite as fiery as he seemed at this mo- 
ment. The truth was, he had just come 
from an interview with his wife, in the 
course of which he had set forth their 
son’s conduct in severe terms. He had 
ended by announcing his intention con- 
cerning the culprit, and by driving Mrs. 
Floyd to the verge of hysterics. Nat- 
urally, in justification of his own course, 
he expressed himself strongly to his next 
interviewer. 

Tom started toward the door, but he 
could not quite make up his mind to 
leave the room. His uncle saw his hes- 
itation, and called him back. Perhaps, 
after all, he was glad to talk of Gerald 
to some one who had no inclination to 
hysterics. 

u He has never settled down to any- 
thing,” he declared, gloomily, dropping 
suddenly into a seat and motioning Tom 
to do likewise. “He has fooled with 

55 


THE YOUNG MAN 


his paints and brushes, and all that 
paper-doll business, until I have lost all 
patience with him. But, Tom, I never 
dreamed that he would disgrace himself 
and all the rest of us in this fashion — 
never, sir, never!’ ’ 

“He seems very sorry,” Tom faltered. 

“Sorry! A dog is sorry to be found 
carrying off sheep, I suppose!” Mr. 
Floyd sniffed, contemptuously, as if he 
had little faith in that particular species 
of sorrow. 

“I wish — I wish there were something 
to be done.” Tom began to realize that 
he really had nothing to say, and to wish 
that he could think of some effective 
way to say it. 

“You seem to have espoused his cause 
very warmly.” Mr. Floyd scanned his 
nephew’s face with some curiosity. 
“See here, Tom, will you be responsible 
for him?” 

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.” 

“I mean this: I will pay no more of 
Gerald’s fancy tailoring bills, and I will 
buy him no more paints. But I will 

56 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


allow him to sleep and eat in the house 
for three months, if he behaves himself. 
But he must live directly under your 
oversight and protection. You are to 
know when he goes out in the morning, 
and you are to see that he stays in at 
night. If he repeats the last perform- 
ance, he goes at once, you understand. 
You think that he is sorry; very well, 
let him be sorry to some purpose.” 

Tom was amazed at this proposition, 
and knew not how to account for it. 
But his uncle, brave as a lion in the 
presence of other difficulties, was an 
arrant coward before his wife’s hysterics. 
He felt that sooner or later he would 
succumb in this instance, as he had in 
all others, and he wished to prepare the 
way by making some provision which 
would enable him to retreat with dig- 
nity. “Will you do it, sir?” he asked, 
sharply, of Tom. 

“Of course, if there is nothing else to 
be done.” 

“Very well; hereafter I shall reckon 
with you instead of with him, and I 

57 


THE YOUNG MAN 


shall see that you send him away on the 
first repetition of this shameful experi- 
ence. Yon understand, Tom, that Ger- 
ald must get something to do, and I 
won’t help him. I won’t help him, I 
say, and yon can’t, for you don’t know 
anybody. For once he must be thrown 
on his own resources. And he mustn’t 
be given money. I will attend to that.” 
Tom easily guessed that it was his Aunt 
Lucinda who was to receive his uncle’s 
attention at this point. “I can have no 
further responsibility for him. I trans- 
fer it all to you.” 

There was nothing more to be said, so 
Tom took himself off, more puzzled as 
to his future course than he had ever 
been before in all his two and twenty 
years. 

One resolution, privately formed on 
the very night of his arrival, must cer- 
tainly be broken now. Having heard 
his Aunt Lucinda speak of the complica- 
tion arising from his presence in the 
household, he had made up his mind 
that he would, at the earliest possible 

58 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


moment, beg to be allowed to go to a 
boarding-house. He had meant to men- 
tion the matter in the presence of his 
aunt, and to gain from her such ready 
sanction for his plan that his uncle 
would be quite helpless. It was evident 
enough that, so far as she was con- 
cerned, he was altogether unwelcome 
here. She had no special dislike of him; 
she simply regarded him as in the way. 
The servants, taking their cue from her, 
looked upon him as one of themselves 
trying to play at being a member of the 
family. He was sure that his uncle and 
Nora were really glad to have him here, 
but on the whole his situation was ex- 
tremely unpleasant. The wages he re- 
ceived would be just sufficient to pay his 
expenses in some decent, quiet place. 
“I can wear my old clothes,” he told 
himself. “I can do anything else better 
than I can stay where I am not wanted.” 

But now the whole matter presented 
itself to him in a new light. He might 
not be wanted, but was he needed? 
Could Gerald, through his intervention, 

« 59 


THE YOUNG MAN 


be Held a little longer — possibly, even, 
saved at last? 

His pledge seemed to command him 
to stay. To put Christ first would be to 
cheerfully take up this strange burden, 
and to bear it as he might. 

He went to Nora and told her what he 
had undertaken. “I’m afraid I’ve blun- 
dered dreadfully, and made it harder for 
poor Gerald,” he said. 

“I suppose you have,” admitted Nora, 
with her terrible frankness. “But if 
Gerald doesn’t deserve to have things 
made harder for him, I don’t know who 
does. It’s what ought to be, and maybe 
it will do him good. He needs to stand 
straight up and face the truth, and know 
there isn’t any easy way of wriggling 
out of things. You’ve been ever so good 
about the whole thing, Tom, and I’ll 
never forget it. I meant just what I 
said that dreadful, dreadful morning 
when I vowed to myself I would never 
forget how willing you were to help. 
And I’ll tell you what, I haven’t any 

tact, and I always do the wrong thing, 
60 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


and pick up edged tools by their blades, 
so I don’t suppose I can do anything. 
But just as long as you’ll stand up for 
Gerald, and try to help him, why, I’ll 
stand up, too.” 

Her flushed face had a look of unusual 
earnestness. Tom did not know what 
to say, but he put out his hand in an 
impulsive, boyish fashion, and she took 
it with a gesture almost as boyish as his 
own. 

As delicately as he could, Tom told 
Gerald the outcome of his interview 
with his uncle. Gerald’s lip curled, but 
he said nothing. Tom could not tell 
whether he was relieved or angry. 

“It will be both within the hour,” he 
told himself. “That’s the thing about 
Gerald that goes hardest with me — he’s 

so many kinds of a fellow every day!” 

61 

i 



THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER VI. 


TOM ATTENDS A FASHIONABLE CHURCH. 


HE next day was Sunday. Tom 
was worn out with the week’s 
hard work at a kind of employ- 
ment altogether new to him, and with 
the unusual excitement of the past few 
days. The breakfast-bell was ringing 
when he awoke, and he dressed hur- 
riedly, with the confused feeling of one 
who is aroused at midnight. 

“Going to church?” asked Nora, care- 
lessly, as she toyed with her napkin-ring. 

“Why” — Tom stopped short, ashamed 
to say no, and so sleepy and so indis- 
posed for strangers that he was scarcely 
ready to say yes. He rallied immedi- 
ately, however. How could he face 
himself, in the quiet of his own room, 
if he should dodge out of church-going 
merely because he was among strangers 
and a little tired? “Yes,” he decided; 
“I am going. Are you?” 



FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


“No.” Nora beat a tattoo on the 
napkin-ring with her spoon, and looked 
at Tom with curious eyes. “We’re not 
what you call every-day church-goers. 
Mother goes at Easter when the bonnets 
are in bloom” — 

“Nora!” Her mother spoke with un- 
usual severity. “Have you forgotten 
how to be respectful? And stop playing 
with your napkin-ring in that babyish 
fashion. One would think you were 
seven, instead of seventeen.” 

“I wish I were,” said Nora, good- 
naturedly. It always amazed Tom to 
see how little she feared her mother. 
“I wish I were little enough to have a 
good time without any ‘manners’ about 
it, or else that I were twenty-seven, 
with all the fuss about society and mar- 
rying over. I think I shall begin to 
have a good time again, just about 
then.” 

“Nora!” Her mother laid down her 
fork, and frowned over the coffee-urn. 
“I really blush to hear you talk in such 
an unwomanly fashion. For a girl to 

63 


THE YOUNG MAN 


speak of marriage in that light way” — 

“Oh, I wasn’t speaking of marriage,” 
explained the unabashed Nora, “only of 
the fuss about it.” 

Gerald came in just then, and Tom 
recalled his strange promise of the night 
before. Dare he leave Gerald to shift 
for himself through an entire Sunday? 

* “Are you going to St. Jude’s?” quer- 
ied Nora, returning to Tom and to the 
subject of church-going. 

“No, I think not,” Tom decided; 
“that is, unless Gerald wishes to go 
there.” 

“Gerald!” Nora sent up one of her 
unmusical shrieks of laughter. “If the 
rest of us are heathen, Gerald is cer- 
tainly a — a cannibal! I don’t think he 
has been to church since he was in 
knickerbockers ! ’ ’ 

“Yes, I have,” said Gerald; “I didn’t 
suppose I was obliged to tell you every 
time I went anywhere.” 

“I think it would have been a great 
deal better for you if you had,” the girl 
retorted. But it did not need her moth- 

64 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


er’s rebuking “Nora!” to recall her 
promise to Tom and to make her 
ashamed of what she had said. She 
wondered how she could be agreeable 
enough to Gerald to compensate for this 
speech, and so caught at the first straw. 
“If you’ll go to church, Gerald, I’ll go, 
too.” 

“Precious inducement that is!” grum- , 
bled Gerald. “You’d wear that hideous 
red hat, I suppose?” 

“It’s all I’ve got,” Nora answered, 
turning the color of the article under 
discussion. “There’s got to be econ- 
omy somewhere in the family.” 

Of this speech, too, Nora became 
ashamed immediately, but, unfortu- 
nately, her best thoughts were always 
after-thoughts. 

Gerald got up and left the room pres- 
ently. He had eaten little, and he 
seemed nervous and out of sorts. 

His mother sighed heavily. “I fear 
Gerald is on the verge of a serious ill- 
ness,” she said. “He has not seemed 
like himself for a week. Nora, I must 

5 65 


THE YOUNG MAN 


say it is very unkind of yon to cross him 
and contradict him continually, when 
he is in this state of mind.” 

To Tom’s surprise, instead of flashing 
an angry reply, Nora said quite humbly: 

“I am sorry, mamma. But somehow 
Gerald always does stir me up disagree- 
ably, especially when I wish to be par- 
ticularly nice to him.” 

Mrs. Floyd shook her majestic head. 
Tom never got tired of wondering 
whether, if she wore a crown — as it 
assuredly seemed that she ought — it 
would drop off at each of these head- 
shakes. “It is time you were learning 
consideration,” she said. “If you can 
not appreciate Gerald’s genius, you can 
at least treat him with civility.” 

Tom was weary enough of' these dis- 
cussions, and he was glad when break- 
fast was over and he was free to go and 
look up Gerald. % 

He found his cousin on the Oriental 
couch in his own room, smoking a cigar. 

“Come, go to church with me,” urged 

66 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


Tom, rather faint-heartedly, it must be 
confessed. 

“Not I. It’s bad enough to be a 
prisoner here at home, without having 
to go out with a ball and chain.” Then 
his irritability seemed to leave him all 
at once, and he laughed so winsoinely 
that Tom felt sure no one in the world 
could have withstood him then. “I’m. 
not blaming you, Tommy. You’re a 
good fellow, and you’ve been a better 
friend to me than I had any right to ex- 
pect. Go to church, Tommy boy” — 
the ridiculous nickname was sweet as he 
spoke it. “Go to church and be good, 
and this poor pagan will stay at home 
and be as good as he can. Honestly, 
Tommy, I’ll stay here and behave my- 
self while you are gone.” 

Tom had never before seen Gerald at 
his best, and the change from his worst 
was so delightful that he might have 
been in danger of promising anything, 
for the sake of keeping him in this 
agreeable mood. He started for church, 
relieved in mind, and feeling that his 

67 


THE YOUNG MAN 


burden was not altogether unbearable. 

Late flowers were blooming in the 
park, and the birds caroled in the trees 
above his head. The October sunshine 
seemed to flood his very soul. For the 
first time since coming to the city he 
was in harmony with his surroundings, 
and happy. 

A week ago this morning he and 
Teddy had trudged to Sunday-school 
together, across the hills of Middlefield. 
A week ago! That life now seemed as 
far away as if it had been in another 
world. He had been very homesick 
during the past few days, and yet he 
was not sure that he wished to go home. 
The spell of the great world was upon 
him, and he was held by it. Something 
new was sure to happen every day. 
There was constant excitement, and the 
expectation of the unexpected. No, he 
was not sure he wished to go home. 

He had picked out the church he 
meant to attend when on his way 
home from work last night. It was 

a rather imposing structure and Tom, 

68 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


seeing the line of handsome carriages 
drawn up before it, now decided that he 
would feel more at home in some little 
mission chapel. But he had chanced to 
hear of Doctor Jonathan Edwards Cush- 
ing and his fame, and he knew the loca- 
tion of no other church of his own faith. 
So he went bravely in, and, in response 
to the inquiries of a dapper little usher, 
he said yes he was a stranger in the city, 
and he did desire to be accommodated 
with a pew. 

He did not need a whole one, and so, 
no doubt, the usher judged, for he gave 
him the end of a seat the greater part 
of which was already occupied by two 
young girls and their toilettes. One of 
the girls was pretty; the other, to Tom’s 
unspoiled eyes, seemed rarely beautiful. 
She had soft, demure brown eyes, and 
wavy chestnut hair, brushed away from 
a low, white forehead. Her little hands, 
hidden in brown gloves, were folded 
upon her lap. She looked like a little 
Puritan maiden, Tom thought, only 
lovelier, of course. 


69 


THE YOUNG MAN 


The other girl was pretty, as has 
been intimated, but she looked as if, on 
occasion, she could giggle. Tom could 
see no charm in a girl who giggled. 

He had just become aware, in a dim 
fashion, of all this, when the first notes 
of the voluntary sounded. The music 
stirred him strangely. He did not then 
know that the hand of a master touched 
the keys, but he knew that his heart 
was uplifted. He thought of his moth- 
er, of her love and prayers, of her hopes 
for him, of all his own dreams and long- 
ings, of the pledge he had made to put 
Christ first in his life. 

The singing was by a quartette choir, 
and was as bad as the playing was- good. 
Tom did not know this, but he thought 
the soprano’s upward flights must be 
extremely difficult, and wondered that 
the basso was not engulfed in the depths 
which he ventured to explore. Of 
course Miss MacCormick and /Mr. 
Schneider would not have been discon- 
certed by the criticisms of a raw farm- 
boy, but criticism is — and justly so — 

70 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


the special province of those who have 
no power to disconcert. 

Doctor Jonathan Edwards Cushing 
was a revelation. He was referred to 
by the public and the newspapers as 
being exceedingly u broad, ” with a 
strong tendency toward Unitarianism. 
Tom, having heard no hint of heresy, 
took him to be rather flat than broad; 
but, then, more accomplished judges 
often become confused in their use of 
these two terms. 

Doctor Cushing stormed, he solilo- 
quized, he apostrophized. He made 
quotations of such length as to give 
assurance that both memory and breath 
were inexhaustible. He laughed, he 
wept; he called upon the stars to come 
down and bear witness to certain 
things — no one could have told exactly 
what. He invited the sun to stand 
still, and bade the moon hide herself in 
shame — though no one knew exactly 
why. And people smiled or cried, as he 
would have them, so it must be great. 

Tom was utterly bewildered. In the 

71 


THE YOUNG MAN 


little old-fashioned church at home 
preaching had been preaching, nothing 
more or less. There had been little 
about Goethe and Shakespeare and Mat- 
thew Arnold and Herbert Spencer, but 
a great deal about Christ and his author- 
ity and the Gospel he committed to men. 

The change from this kind of preach- 
ing to that of Doctor Jonathan Edwards 
Cushing affected him somewhat as had 
the change from the simple home-life of 
the farm to the artificiality of his uncle’s 
house. 

No one spoke to him after the service, 
except the dapper little usher, who gave 
him a brisk invitation to “Come in 
again, please.” Perhaps he was a dry- 
goods clerk. At all events, Tom had 
heard the same words and tone at the 
counter where he matched his mother’s 
dress goods. 

“I won’t give it up,” he told himself, 
as he walked slowly toward his uncle’s. 
“I’ll come to Christian Endeavor to- 
night. I’ll feel at home there, at any 
rate.” 


72 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER VII. 

MARJORIE DEANE. 

id you see Marjorie Deane at 
church?” asked Nora, as she 
and Tom lingered in the parlor 
for a moment after dinner. 

“How do I know?” demanded Tom, 
laughing. “Unfortunately, people do 
not wear placards with their names at- 
tached to them.” 

“She does. She is pretty. Isn’t that 
placard enough.” 

“Then there were two of her,” as- 
serted Tom. “One of her is tall, and 
the other is little and — and very nice- 
looking.” 

Nora laughed immoderately and not 
very kindly. 

“What a society editor you would 
make with your graphic descriptions! 
Now listen to me: Did she have a 
lovely complexion, and wear her hair in 




THE YOUNG MAN 


a pompadour, and have on a brown suit 
and turban?” 

“How should I know?” groaned Toni. 
“You girls talk the worst jargon! One 
would suppose you were describing a 
dry-goods counter instead of a woman. 
There were fifty girls at church, and 
they all had on brown suits and turbans, 
I think — at least they may have been 
brown for aught I know. There was 
one girl” — 

“She was the one,” interrupted Nora, 
with decision. “There isn’t any other 
when Marjorie is in sight. Now, Tom, 
just the least bit of a solemn warning: 
Don’t say anything to Gerald about 
Marjorie Deane.” 

“Oh!” 

Tom was a good deal surprised, for 
he had not expected to find Gerald’s ac- 
quaintances at church. 

“They have been friends ever since 
they were little children,” said Nora, 
with a little sigh. “They were both 
fond of music, and they played together 
a great deal. But she says she can’t be 

74 


FROM ML DDL EFIEL D 


friends with him any more, and he takes 
it very much to heart, of course.’ ’ 

Tom did not blame Gerald’s former 
friend. Certainly he would not expect a 
refined young lady to be especially 
friendly with a fellow of his cousin’s pro- 
clivities. He had enough consideration 
for Nora’s feelings to keep him from 
saying so. But he thought of Hester 
and shuddered. 

“Gerald played on the piano all the 
morning,” Nora went on to say. “It’s 
the first time for a week.” 

“I thought your father didn’t like to 
hear it.” 

“He was at the office. He always 
goes down on Sunday to open his mail 
and go over the books. Does that shock 
you? I suppose you will get terribly 
shocked a great many times if you stay 
with us very long. Poor old papa! I 
don’t know what he would do if he 
hadn’t his business. It’s meat and drink 
to him, and he has no other way to 
spend his time.” 

Tom felt a sudden courage leaping in 

75 


THE YOUNG MAN 


his veins. He was full of pity for this 
whole family, with their good impulses 
and their utter blindness to the higher 
things of life. To Nora, at least, he 
would speak. 

“It’s too bad, Nora,” he said, blunt- 
ly. “I wish you would go to church, 
even if the others don’t. Then you 
would have something worth spending 
your time on.” 

“Thank you for advising me, Master 
Pious,” retorted Nora, whose quick 
temper was up in earnest. “You won’t 
find the lecture bureau profitable in this 
family.” 

Tom was grieved, for he had felt that 
he and Nora were very good friends, and 
that her friendship was all of good fel- 
lowship permitted him in his new sur- 
roundings. Now, even this seemed 
gone. Yet he could not quite wish the 
words unsaid. Her very sensitiveness 
showed that they were needed, though 
he was ashamed enough that they had 
been so bunglingly spoken. He went 
up to Gerald, who was lounging on his 

76 


FROM MI DDL EFIEL D 


couch, reading a novel and smoking a 
cigarette. 

“Glad to see you,” he said, to Tom’s 
infinite surprise. “It’s dull here Sun- 
days, isn’t it? Have a comfortable 
chair. ’ ’ 

. It was the first time Tom had been 
sure that he was welcome in Gerald’s 
room, and he was almost afraid to 
breathe lest the spell should be broken. 
He drew up a chair and sat down, wait- 
ing for what might come next. 

“I suppose I must go out to-morrow 
and hunt up something to do,” Gerald 
said, throwing down his book and toss- 
ing away his cigarette with a vigor 
which led Tom to hope he was leaving 
his old life behind him. “And I don’t 
know what it will be. That’s the in- 
convenience of knowing a little of every- 
thing except the things that are useful.” 

In sober truth, Gerald knew little 
enough of anything, useful or otherwise; 
but he supposed he knew a great deal, 
and in this supposition Tom, in his ig- 
norance of the world, naturally shared. 

77 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“I have thought of a newspaper of- 
fice,” Gerald said, presently. U I have 
written a few little things — society 
verses, mostly.” 

“Were they printed?” asked Tom, in 
great awe. 

“Some of them — in our college paper. 
I drew the cartoons, too, though I like 
serious art better. I might get a posi- 
tion as an illustrator, I suppose, but I 
don’t take much to the idea.” 

“Couldn’t you teach music?” asked 
Tom, who was limited by his inexperi- 
ence, and who imagined that the career 
of a successful music teacher would look 
to Gerald, in his present condition, like 
a shining one. 

“Teach music! Pshaw! I can’t count 
time, even. My music is in me. It 
could never have been put into me in 
the routine way. I know nothing at all 
about processes. The result comes, and 
I don’t know how. I can compose a 
little, but I haven’t the technical train- 
ing necessary for that. I do things in 

78 


FROM MI DDL EFIEL D 


my own way, and it isn’t anybody else’s 

way.” 

Tom bad never before thought to be 
particularly thankful for his training on 
the farm, and his habit of doing what 
came to hand without regard to liking. 
Now it seemed to him that this simple 
habit was better than a fortune. He felt 
extremely sorry for Gerald, without 
knowing exactly why. And Gerald 
sorely needed this pity, though not on 
the grounds on which he asked for it. 

“I’m a bad piece, am I not?” he 
queried, smiling in his most winsome 
fashion. It was this smile which had 
won forgiveness for Gerald Floyd at 
every turn of his erratic career. 

“I wish I were like you,” he went on, 
“comfortable and steady and satisfied 
with as much of life as comes in my 
way. But I’m not. I’ve always been a 
dreamer, and my dreams haven’t always 
been selfish ones, either. Truly, Tommy 
boy,” — the gentle, caressing tone of the 
morning came back — “truly, Tommy 
boy, I used to dream of great and noble 

79 


THE YOUNG MAN 


things that I meant to do. If I had 
lived in the days of chivalry, I wouldn’t 
have made such a bad knight, I think. 
Knighthood is rather in my line, you see. 
Doing noble things isn’t so very hard — 
it’s the doing them over and over that 
kills. I think the glue must have been 
left out of my composition. I don’t 
stick to anythi ng. ’ ’ 

He laughed, and less bitterly than 
usual. 

“I’m talking nonsense, Tommy boy, 
and you don’t understand a thing I say. 
If you wanted to do something high 
and good, you’d keep at it until it was 
done. You don’t understand how dead 
tired of it a fellow of my style would get 
the second or third day. But it’s true 
that I’ve had my aspirations, and those 
oi the finest sort. I didn’t live up to 
them, but they answered to talk about 
for awhile. You didn’t know I could 
preach so well, did you? But preaching 
is exactly my kind. It’s practicing that 
knocks me out.” 

Tom was afraid to talk. He could 
80 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


not keep up with his cousin’s moods, 
and he had a fear of checking some ut- 
terance that Gerald would be the better 
for haviiig made. 

“But the age of chivalry has passed,” 
Gerald began again. “I had a friend — 
a girl I had played with as a child. O, 
don’t be alarmed — she was only a friend, 
and I’m not sure I should have cared 
ever to have her for anything else. But 
I invested her in my own mind with all 
manner of graces and virtues. I wasn’t 
sentimental about her, in the way we 
usually take sentiment, but I liked to 
think there was one girl in the world 
who meant what she said and was all 
she pretended to be. It made the 
story books more real, and it put soul 
into the pictures I tried to paint. But 
when the time came that things went 
hard with me, she turned her back on 
me like all the rest. Then all the knight- 
hood died out of me, I think. There 
was nothing left to keep it alive.” 

“But I don’t see why knighthood isn’t 

just the same thing, whether some girl 
6 81 


I 


THE YOUNG MAN 


is friendly or not,” expostulated Tom. 
He was quite sure that Gerald was 
speaking of Marjorie Deane, but he re- 
membered Nora’s warning. “Doing 
right needn’t depend upon anybody’s 
friendliness.” 

“With you, maybe not. I suppose 
you are religious and all that. How 
did you like Doctor Jonathan Edwards 
Cushing?” 

Tom was startled by this practical 
question. He was still thinking of 
knighthood, and of what Gerald had 
told him concerning Marjorie Deane. 

“I hardly know yet,” he said in an- 
swer to Gerald’s question. “Have yotf 
ever heard him?” 

“Yes, I have heard him often, though 
Nora says that I never go to church.” 

“Are you going with me to-night?” 

“No, thank you. I am a pagan, you 
know. You mustn’t expect to turn me 
into anything else.” 

He picked up his book and looked so 
likely to become bored that Tom 

thought it wise to take himself off. 

82 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER VIII. 


TOM BECOMES DISCOURAGED. 

OM did go to the Endeavor meet- 
ing that night, though he 
would not have been quite sure, 
if he had not heard it announced, what 
kind of meeting it was. There were not 
more than twenty-five persons present, 
and only three or four of these were 
young men. There were a few young 
girls, but most of the persons in attend- 
ance were nearing middle age. 

One of the deacons of the church was 
leading — “presiding” was what he 
called it. He read a short passage, called 
on Dr. Cushing to offer prayer, and then 
announced that the first item on the pro- 
gram would be a piano solo by Miss 
Marjorie Deane. 

Tom easily guessed that Miss Mar- 
jorie’s playing was exquisite. He sup- 
posed that the composition was some- 
thing religious — as it assuredly was — 


THE YOUNG MAN 


but be was not used to piano solos in an 
Endeavor meeting, and be could not at 
once adjust bimself to anything so un- 
familiar. 

“Miss Bessie Eangdon will now kindly 
favor us with a recitation,” the presid- 
ing officer announced, and the blonde 
young lady who had sat with Miss Mar- 
jorie in the morning went forward and 
rendered “The Maiden Martyr” with 
much apparent self-consciousness and 
with many elocutionary flourishes. 

Next there was a vocal quartette, and 
then Dr. Cushing was called upon for 
remarks. 

He remarked at great length, quoting 
much poetry, and ended by describing a 
sunset in Italy. By this time Tom had 
quite abandoned the hope of hearing 
anything that would suggest an En- 
deavor meeting, but the leader said, 
courteously, at the close of Dr. Cush- 
ing’s address, “If there is any one pres- 
ent who will volunteer to take some 
part, we shall be glad to listen to him 
now. ’ ’ 


84 


\ 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 

There was perfect silence. Tom was 
not unused to prayer-meeting pauses, 
but he was altogether unaccustomed to 
such equanimity as was shown by these 
well-bred Endeavorers, who seemed to 
feel that there was nothing at all ex- 
pected of them, and that the invitation 
to participate was sc mere formality, as 
necessary as the benediction. 

Tom could not take part, he felt sure, 
with all these elegant strangers to look 
on in polite surprise. It would have 
been hard in any case, for he was not 
fluent, and the “I promise to take some 
part,” had always been to him the bur- 
dening clause of the pledge. If he were 
gifted, it would be different. 

“I promise that I will always put 
Christ first.” These words seemed all 
at once to take possession of him. Did 
they mean that he was to take part for 
the sake of Christ, and not for those who 
sat by? He had wished to keep his 
pledge, but he had not thought that put- 
ting Christ first would ever mean just 
this. 


85 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“I am a stranger here, but I &m an 
Endeavorer.” He was on his feet and 
in the midst of this little speech almost 
before he knew it. “I am glad to be 
with you, and want to say that I am 
trying to lead a Christian life.” 

There was the slightest possible rustle 
of surprise. “We are glad the visitor 
has spoken to us,” the leader said. 
“We have no pledge in our Society, but 
it is certainly commendable that one 
who has taken such a pledge should 
keep it wherever he is. We will now 
stand and sing the doxology.” 

An Endeavor Society without a pledge 
was a new idea to Tom, and his first ex- 
perience had not conclusively proven to 
him that such an invertebrate organism 
was desirable. 

After the meeting, the deacon who 
had presided shook hands with him. “I 
am sure you enjoyed the meeting,” he 
said. “We always aim to have a pro- 
gram which is worth coming out to 
hear.” 

Tom, who had been prepared to hear 
86 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


an apology, was quite overcome, and 
could think of nothing to say but “In- 
deed!’ ’ Afterward he decided that this 
was the stupidest thing he could have 
said, but perhaps it did not matter. 

The evening church service was a 
song and organ recital, with a short lec- 
ture from Dr. Cushing on “Church Archi- 
tecture in the Middle Ages.” The lec- 
ture was one of a series, and Tom could 
make but little out of it. He went to 
his room little comforted by the services 
of the day, and reasoned over the situa- 
tion for a long time before he succeeded 
in convincing himself that he was not in 
the least homesick. 

Things went badly with him next 
day. After a day of rest, the roughness 
and profanity of the men were especially 
irritating. Tom was quick and apt 
about his work, but he was not used to 
working under direction, and he could 
not remember to wait for orders. To-day 
he moved a quantity of stock, thinking 
only of the advantage of the change, and 
not at all of whether or not it was his 

87 


THE YOUNG MAN 


business to make it. For this he was 
sharply reprimanded by Kieffer, the fore- 
man. “You needn’t think,” Kieffer 
told him, “that because you’re the old 
gentleman’s relation, you’re expected to 
take any liberties around here. He’s 
expressly said you’re to be counted as 
one of the men and nothing more.” 

This bit of information was quite gra- 
tuitous, and took much of the spirit 
from Tom’s apology. He did apologize, 
after a fashion, but he saw that the fore- 
man was not satisfied. 

“You’ve got too much pepper in you 
for this kind of business,” said Ben 
Harris, a good-natured young fellow 
who worked with Tom. “Better make 
the best of things now, and wait until 
you get to be superintendent, to set us 
fellows to rights.” 

“I don’t think I’ll ever be superin- 
tendent.” 

“I don’t think so, either, the way 
things are going. Kieffer don’t like you 
any too well, and, just between good 


FROM MI DDL EFIEL D 


chums, you’re not putting him in the 
way to like you any better.” 

Tom’s temper was already irritated, 
and he was inclined to resent such famil- 
iarity from a new acquaintance. But 
why should he? Ben’s open face told 
the kindness of his intentions. 

“I’m not looking out for the superin- 
tendent’s job,” he managed to say, 
pleasantly, “but I’ll try to be more care- 
ful after this. You must make some 
allowance for a fellow who has always 
worked on a farm, and has had nobody 
but his father for a boss.” 

Ben looked at him interestedly for a 
moment, and then smiled. “I guess 
you’ll do,” he said. “I’ve kind of took 
to you all along. I like a fellow who 
ain’t afraid of an honest day’s work. 
These here dudes that slack up about 
’leven o’clock, hopin’ the whistle’ll 
blow for noon — them ain’t my kind. 
Some folks get their enjoyment in sing- 
in’ hymns, and some get it in playin’ 
cards. I get mine in a clean, honest 
day’s work; an’, though I ain’t nobody 

89 


THE YOUNG MAN 


in partic’lar, I do lay out that I know a 
day’s work when I see it. An’ I ruther 
guess you’ll do.” 

However, Tom had not heard the last 
of the matter. That evening his uncle 
proposed to walk home with him. This 
was unusual and suggestive. It proved 
to be as Tom had suspected — Kieffer 
had reported him. 

“He says you are inclined to be offi- 
cious,” said Peter Floyd, eyeing his 
nephew sharply. “That will never do. 
Nothing could be more demoralizing to 
the men than to see that I gave privi- 
leges to my nephew I did not give to 
them. I have put you among the men 
as one of them. That position you will 
have to maintain.” 

Again the irritation returned, but in 
dealing with his uncle it was more easily 
conquered. Tom had a strong sense of 
justice, and he could not but see that, as 
his employer, his uncle had a right to 
demand anything which was reasonable 
and not in itself wrong. 

“I am very sorry I took so much upon 

90 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


myself,” lie said. “The change seemed 
to me such an improvement that it didn’t 
occur to me it wasn’t my business, until 
afterward.” 

“Very well. Hereafter do your think- 
ing beforehand.” 

Tom was keenly hurt, for he had not 
been able to give up his original opinion 
that he was in some sense a favorite. 

Nothing more was said to Tom, but 
to Nora, the only one of the family who 
was in his counsel, her father said: 
“Tom is too forward. He is only a boy, 
and must learn to keep his place.” 

“I wish he would!” Nora said, tartly. 
“He lectured me yesterday for not going 
to church.” 

“Um! He must learn!” 

“I’m sure” — Nora had never been 
noted for the consistency of her opinions 
— “I’m sure he knows a great deal more 
than some people who make more show 
in the world.” 

“So he does; and I like the boy. 
There’s a manly ring about him that 
isn’t common, and I like him.” 

91 


THE YOUNG MAN 


This bit of conversation would have 
been very consoling to Tom if he had 
heard it, but he did not, and he felt that 
he was in disgrace. 

Gerald came in presently and an- 
nounced that he was working in a news- 
paper office. 

“How did you get the position?” 
asked Tom, marveling greatly. 

“Get the position! It never has taken 
any trouble for me to get anything I 
wanted. The trouble is to keep it after 
I’ve got it. Didn’t I tell you the glue 
was left out of my composition?” 

92 


FROM MI DDL E FI ELD 


CHAPTER IX. 

NORA’S COMING OUT PARTY. 

o you know what is going to 
happen in a little more than 
two weeks?” demanded Nora 
of Tom one morning. u I’m going to 
take my first lesson.” 

“In what?” 

“In society. I’m not to be ‘intro- 
duced’ — we’re not rich enough for that 
— but I am to have a short and easy 
lesson in the rudiments.” 

“I don’t believe I understand.” 

“No; I didn’t expect you would. 
You don’t know the language. Well, 
I’ in going to begin to be in ‘society’ — ■. 
just a little. I won’t be through school 
until June, but mamma thinks I ought 
to begin to get my bearings in the 
meantime. Getting ‘into the swim’ is a 
great affair, when people are rich and 
the debutante is pretty, but in this case 
neither of these desirable conditions ex- 
93 




THE YOUNG MAN 


ists, so I must slip in as quietly as 
possible.” 

Tom was surprised daily to hear the 
several members of his uncle’s family 
discuss the subject of their limited 
means. To him it seemed that their 
money must be burdensome; but they 
talked as if they were sadly scrimped, 
and as if they were debarred from the 
most desirable society for the lack of an 
income sufficient to meet its demands. 
He was quite sure that in his father’s 
home there had never been such a pain- 
ful consciousness of the want of money. 
This was true enough; but Tom was 
just beginning to learn that wealth and 
its standards are all comparative. 

“How are you going to slip in?” he 
questioned, interestedly. 

“Mamma is going to give a very light 
entertainment, light as to expenses and 
refreshments, I mean. The company 
will be heavy enough, no doubt. My 
name is to be on the cards, and I am to 
stand up beside mamma and try to look 
as if I were used to it. It will be stupid, 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


but I must go through it sometime, and, 
then, I’m to have a new gown, which 
will be something of a consolation. Be- 
ing ‘in’ is, on the whole, better than 
being out, so long as there is bound to 
be an in and an out side, especially with 
all the holiday fun coming on.” 

From this time the house was astir 
with preparations. Nora told Tom from 
time to time of the progress of affairs, 
and seemed to be weighted down with 
an unusual sense of responsibility. 

“If I could fit a gown as Marjorie 
Deane does!” she sighed heavily, knot- 
ting her big brow into a frown. “She 
looks as if she were made for her clothes, 
instead of her clothes for her.” 

“Is that a compliment?” 

“I’m not sure. I certainly meant it 
to be. My new dress is a poem until I 
put it on. Then it is a lesson in frac- 
tions and the nines of the multiplication 
table, all in one. And the fit of it isn’t 
the worst thing. That dressmaker of 
the oily lips actually said my com- 
plexion would be ‘be-yutiful’ with that 

95 


THE YOUNG MAN 


pink against it, under the gaslight. 
And the thing makes me look like a 
sage-bush — honestly! She has put that 
compliment into her bill, you may be 
certain. I know her tricks and her 
manners.’ ’ 

At another time she confided to him 
her anxiety on the subject of the invi- 
tations. “Everybody is coming, of 
course,” she said. “That is quite in- 
evitable. One can’t discriminate in an 
affair of this kind. But, honestly, Tom, 
it goes against the grain with me to 
have all those fellows that Gerald used 
to go with— *the very ones that led him 
into all the trouble, and that brought 
him hpme that dreadful night.” 

“I wouldn't have them,” insisted 
Tom, quickly, quite forgetting that he 
had resolved not to be “officious.” “It 
isn’t right.” 

“What if it isn’t? You always talk 
as if it were simply a matter of our own 
pleasure whether we do things or not. 
If mamma were to leave out George 
Graves and Burt Hadley there would 

96 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


be no end of a stir. We are not people 
who can settle such things. We have 
to leave them as they are settled for us. 
The Hadleys could leave us out, but for 
us to leave them out — that would simply 
be to commit social suicide in the most 
inelegant possible way.” 

“I think it’s moral suicide to have 
such fellows here, when you have Gerald 
to think of.” 

“Don’t I think of Gerald?” He 
could not doubt it, as he saw the pained, 
anxious look on her face. “But what 
can I do? I couldn’t raise a protest 
loud enough to keep him from being 
invited. And I know no one would 
understand.” 

Tom was sorely troubled, and, per- 
haps, if he had not been so recently re- 
buked, he would have gained courage to 
go to his uncle. As it was he was sim- 
ply troubled and powerless. 

He wondered if he would be expected 
to be of the company, and soon he de- 
cided that Nora certainly intended him 
to be. “Marjorie Deane will be here,” 

7 97 


THE YOUNG MAN 


she said. “Of course, she must come, 
for our families are the very closest of 
friends. I’m going to trust you to keep 
Gerald out of her way.” 

So Nora was expecting he would be 
in the parlors that evening, and his aunt 
was reconciled to the prospect. But 
one thing was quite certain, he could 
not appear on such an occasion without 
an addition to his wardrobe. He had 
not seen much of the world, but he had 
seen enough to know that his best suit 
would not pass muster at his aunt’s 
party. He might be comfortable enough 
in it, but Aunt kucinda could not endure 
the ordeal. Of another thing he was 
quite as certain: He could not afford 
the money to buy a new suit. So the 
solution of the question seemed simple 
enough. He would excuse himself and 
stay either in his room or at his uncle’s 
office. 

“But you mustn’t stay away from my 
party,” Nora said, when he began his 
explanations. “It wouldn’t be respect- 
able. The idea of your running out the 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


back door as if you were afraid of peo- 
ple. And you kncfw how you’re always 
talking about what is right and what 
isn’t. This wouldn’t be right; I know 
it wouldn’t.” 

U I don’t see why. None of your 
friends know me, and no one but your- 
selves would know there was an ab- 
sentee.” 

“Don’t you know what yon promised 
me about Gerald?” 

“Don’t yon know that yon promised 
to help? Is it keeping your promise to 
have those fellows here — the very ones 
you are most afraid of?” 

“I told you how helpless I was in 
that matter. But it isn’t so in this. 
You can help. You can keep an eye on 
Gerald all the while. And I know 
what is behind all your excuses. It’s 
something about clothes.” 

“Yes,” Tom said, “I was honest in 
telling you I wouldn’t feel at home in a 
house full of strangers, but the matter of 
clothes has something to do with it. 
Your friends don’t wear gray sack coats 
L.ofC. 99 


THE YOUNG MAN 


at an evening party, and you wouldn’t 
feel comfortable to see me in one. It’s 
just for your sake, and — and your moth- 
er’s, but I’m sure you know how I 
feel.” 

“ Ye — es,” assented Nora. “I’ve 
thought it all out. You won’t like it, 
and I’m sorry for that, but it’s got to 
be, and perhaps you’ll feel better about 
it when it’s over. You must wear one 
of Gerald’s suits. It won’t fit half 
badly, and he has a closet full of them,” 

Tom felt the hot blood fly to his face. 
He was nothing if not independent. In 
this independence he had delighted, and 
he had been, perhaps, more proud of it 
than became a modest youth. To ap- 
pear in fine society wearing some one 
else’s fine clothes! The idea was so 
obnoxious to him that he had to shut 
his lips to keep from saying something 
unkind. 

“ Now you’re angry,” said Nora. 
“And I’m not sorry I made you so, for 
if you’re that proud you’re sinful, and 

you ought to be made to realize it.” 

100 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


It seems absurd to say it, but Tom 
had never been more conscious of a sac- 
rifice than when he answered humbly, 
“If I am too proud to appreciate such 
kindness, I ought to be ashamed of my- 
self. I’ll do it, Nora, provided Gerald 
doesn’t object.” 

Gerald did not object. On the con- 
trary, he seemed to take some pleasure 
in finding the coat a very good fit, and 
in picking out a perfectly correct neck- 
tie for Tom’s use. “You might as well 
go in for the whole thing while you’re 
about it,” he said. “You’ll not find it 
exhilarating at the best.” 

This was quite true. Tom did not 
find it exhilarating, for he knew none of 
the guests, and the few perfunctory in- 
troductions he received did not lead to 
anything particularly interesting in the 
way of conversation. 

The young people had card-tables in 
the library, and this troubled Tom, for 
he knew that Gerald had been almost 
insanely fond of cards. Burt Hadley 

and Bessie kangdon came toward one of 
101 


THE YOUNG MAN 


these tables, and seemed about to sit 
down, when Marjorie Deane crossed the 
room and stood close to Bessie, pretend- 
ing to sniff the rose she wore. 

4 ‘Don’t, dear!” she whispered, softly. 
Soft as had been the whisper, Tom 
was standing close enough to hear it. 
And he thought he would be glad to 

remember the words for Gerald’s sake. 
102 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER X. 

TOM LEADS AN ENDEAVOR MEETING. 

OM went to church regularly and 
always spoke in the Endeavor 
meeting. This last required an 
effort each time, but his conscience had 
taken hold at this point and would not 
let go. He argued that these well-bred 
young people probably smiled in secret 
at his crude speeches, and that it could 
do no good to excite their ridicule; but 
his argument was altogether in vain. 
The more he thought upon the matter, 
the more his obligation asserted itself. 
He could not disregard it and be true. 

“I heard something about you to- 
day,” Nora said, one evening when 
the two were alone together. “I was at 
Bessie Eangdon’s and Marjorie Deane 
came in. They were talking about their 
young people’s society, and they — no, 
Marjorie said that she admired your in- 
dependence in doing what you believed 

103 



i 


THE YOUNG MAN 

*was right. She said she had always 
thought their society ought to have a 
pledge, and now she thought so more 
than ever. Bessie is a snob, though, 
and she said she didn’t believe in their 
society having things just as they do in 
little churches where there isn’t any 
talent. ‘Talent’ is Bessie’s pet word. 
She thinks it means that you have pretty 
blonde hair and slim waists and can do 
poses just as your Delsarte teacher tells 
you to. I wouldn’t fancy a church so- 
ciety run on that plan myself, but I sup- 
pose it’s all a matter of taste.” 

Tom could not help thinking of Mar- 
jorie’s words for many days after this, 
and wondering how much sincerity there 
was behind them. He had been intro- 
duced to her at his uncle’s home on the 
evening of the party which had been 
such a burden to Nora. Since then she 
had never failed to speak to him pleas- 
antly after each Endeavor meeting. 
Perhaps she was heartless, as Gerald in- 
sisted on believing, but naturally her 
courtesy to the untrained country boy 

104 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


led him to think of her with the utmost 
possible charity. 

One Sunday evening Tom made his 
way to the church through a driving 
rain, only to find the door of the lecture- 
room locked and the house dark. Evi- 
dently the sexton had not thought it 
worth while to open the building, with 
the weather so uninviting. 

‘‘This is a fine commentary on the 
lack of a pledge,” thought Tom, as he 
shook the door. “If we had promised 
to ‘attend every meeting unless hin- 
dered by some reason — ’ ” 

His mental quotation was cut short by 
the sound of voices in the other door- 
way. 

“Now, Marjorie, I hope you know how 
perfectly silly it was of you to want to 
come,” a girl’s petulant treble was say- 
ing. “You might have known that no 
one ever came to the young people’s 
meeting on a night like this.” 

“Now, Bessie!” It was Marjorie 
Deane who expostulated thus gently. “I 

don’t think this weather is a bit dread- 

105 


THE YOUNG MAN 


ful. You know we went to the water- 
color exhibition yesterday, when it was 
raining quite as hard. And it isn’t the 
rain’s fault, but ours, that old Zekel has- 
n’t seen fit to light up the church.” 

“Ours! I should like to know how?” 

“Don’t you remember that the last 
rainy Sunday night he said he ‘done sot 
yere and sot yere, and you all neber set 
foot in’? No w T onder he was discour- 
aged and didn’t think it worth while to 
come to-night.” 

“Well, I think it was very sensible of 
him. If we had been as sensible, we would 
have stayed at home, too. And what 
shall we do now? We can’t wait here 
until church time, and I did so want to 
hear Dr. Cushing’s lecture on ‘Mediaeval 
Poetry.’ I know it will be lovely. If 
we had stayed in until then, perhaps the 
rain would have been over.” 

“That’s just like girls!” A third 
voice took up the lament at this point. 
This last voice was unmistakably boyish, 
and Tom recognized it as belonging to 

Richie Tangdon, Bessie’s younger broth- 

106 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


er. “Girls are always wanting you to 
go somewhere, and then wishing they 
hadn’t gone.” After which succinct and 
philosophical statement he relapsed into 
silence. 

The two doorways were so close to- 
gether that it was quite impossible not 
to hear the conversation, and Tom de- 
cided that the most sensible thing he 
could do was to make himself known to 
his neighbors, who had evidently not 
noticed his approach. So he crossed to 
the other flight of steps and said, awk- 
wardly enough, “We seem to be locked 
out.” 

“Isn’t it too bad?” It was Marjorie 
who spoke. “But we richly deserve it, 
for we haven’t been coming on rainy 
nights.” 

“Can’t I go for the key?” Tom ques- 
tioned. “Here come three others. It 
would be a pity not to have a meeting.” 

True enough, here were the Fannings 
— the twin sisters and their tall, shy 
brother. They had come to the city 
only a little while before, and had been 

107 


THE YOUNG MAN 


at the Endeavor meeting only two or 
three times. 

“Does any one know where the sexton 
lives?” persisted Tom. 

“I do,” said Marjorie, quickly; and 
gave explicit directions. He wondered 
how she had come to know. There was 
no mystery about it, however, for the 
large family of old Zekel had many 
almoners, and Marjorie Deane was among 
the most liberal. 

Tom was back directly with old Zekel, 
panting and apologetic, at his heels. 
Fortunately the house was warm, and in 
a moment the lecture-room was aglow 
with light. 

“What shall we do, now that we are 
in?” asked Bessie, who was still out of 
sorts. She must be forgiven, for damp- 
ness often disagrees with blonde hair. 
“It would be ridiculous to try to have a 
meeting. We have no program ar- 
ranged, and no leader.” 

“This is better than being outside, at 
all events,” said Marjorie. “We can 
sing something, at least, or — why, Mr. 

108 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


Floyd, can you not lead a little meeting 
— a real Christian Endeavor meeting?” 

Tom had never faced the cannon’s 
mouth, but he fancied at the moment 
that this would be an enviable position. 
He, with his scanty education and gifts, 
to lead the meeting in Dr. Jonathan 
Edwards Cushing’s church! Then, U I 
promised that I will always put Christ 
first,” he said to himself, and walked 
straight to the leader’s chair. 

Several others had come in by this 
time, and the circle continued to widen 
as the meeting went on. The weather 
was clearing, and many of the young 
people who wished to be present at Dr. 
Cushing’s lecture dropped into the lec- 
ture-room and heard and wondered. 

For it was a wonderful meeting, one 
of those experiences which come once 
in a lifetime, one of those experiences 
which, when they do come, we are com- 
pelled, in spite of our philosophy, to 
admit are not of earth but of God. Be- 
fore the hour was over, every member of 
the little circle had spoken, or offered 

109 


THE YOUNG MAN 


prayer. None could tell how it came, 
least of all Tom, whose head grew 
dizzy as he tried to realize it all. All 
he could remember was that he had 
tried to tell them, in a simple way, 
what he thought it meant to put Christ 
first in our lives; and that, after he had 
finished, Marjorie Deane had risen, with 
tears in her beautiful eyes, and had said, 
u L,et us pray.” After that the foun- 
tains of the deep were broken up. Shy 
young Mr. Fanning spoke with much 
feeling, saying that he had been super- 
intendent of a Sunday-school in a dis- 
tant city, but that here he had been a 
stranger, and very lonely, until to-night. 
Then the rest followed almost eagerly. 
Even Bessie Eangdon tremblingly asked 
that the others would pray for her. For, 
after all, the world is better than we are 
likely to think, and goodness, as well as 
evil, is contagious. 

Perhaps Dr. Jonathan Edwards Cush- 
ing never knew why such rapt young 
faces were upturned to him as he deliv- 
ered his highly-wrought lecture on 
no 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 

“Mediaeval Poetry.” No one had told 
him of that earlier meeting, and if he 
had been told, perhaps he would not 
have understood. 


in 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XI. 

GERALD IN BAD COMPANY. 

uiTE against Tom’s expectations, 
Gerald liad continued to go to 
the newspaper office regularly. 
Fortunately, he had an assignment for 
day-duty, and so, perhaps, was less 
tempted than he might otherwise have 
been. He was quick and active men- 
tally, and, if he was somewhat super- 
ficial, this fault was in a measure com- 
pensated for by his versatility. He sel- 
dom spoke of his work, except to relate 
some amusing or exciting adventure con- 
nected with it, but he must be successful 
to some degree, it would seem, or he 
would not keep his place and draw his 
salary. Tom was still uneasy, but he 
hoped much from the discipline of regu- 
lar hours and hard work, and was, on 
the whole, more comfortable than he 
had been before. 

Gerald seldom played the piano now, 
112 




FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


and never touched a brush. . Tom sup- 
posed that this was a good sign, but in 
reality it was no sign at all. His cousin 
tired of everything — even of the two oc- 
cupations that he really loved — and just 
now a new occupation, if it did not ab- 
sorb him, at least served to pass the 
time. 

On the Sunday night which had wit- 
nessed such an unusual scene in the lec- 
ture-room of Dr. Cushing’s church, Tom 
came home in an exalted state of mind 
which was quite unusual with him. He 
had experienced much, and all victories 
looked easy. He had forgotten, as we 
all forget, how near is the valley of need 
to the mountain of vision. 

He had almost forgotten about Gerald 
even, for the time, but as he passed his 
cousin’s room he heard voices, and won- 
dered. Gerald seldom had company 
nowadays, for he had dropped out of his 
old circle, and had not seemed to care 
for a place in any other. 

One of the voices was certainly Burt 

8 113 


THE YOUNG MAN 


Hadley’s. Tom was on the alert at once, 
and rapped vigorously. 

“Come in!” called Gerald, in his most 
ungracious tone. Two of Burt’s friends 
were with him, and the four were play- 
ing cards. 

They greeted Tom good-naturedly 
enough, and did not seem in the least 
embarrassed. Why should they be? 
They had played cards by special invi- 
tation in this same home not a month ago. 

Gerald looked a trifle uneasy. Then 
he said, with a sudden change of man- 
ner, “Don’t be shocked, Tommy boy. 
This is very innocent sort of business. I 
suppose there isn’t any use in asking 
.you to take a hand, but at least you can 
sit down and let us convince you that it 
isn’t dangerous.” 

Tom sat down on the couch. In truth, 
he did not know what he ought to do — 
whether it was wrong for him to look on 
and witness that of which he disap- 
proved, or whether it would be still 
worse to go away and leave Gerald in 
such company. 


114 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


So he stayed, and grew more indig- 
nant with every breath he drew. The 
boys were coarse and ill-bred, and he 
had never before had the same sense of 
being degraded that he felt in their so- 
ciety. They spoke irreverently of relig- • 
ion and slightingly of women. Nothing 
seemed sacred to them. Two or three 
times Gerald quieted them when they 
grew uproarious, and this caution seemed 
to amuse theiri very much. 

“Maybe we’d better go home,” said 
Burt Hadley, at last. “We might wake 
up the governor, and then there ’d be a 
sensation.” 

“He isn’t asleep, that’s the worst of 
it,” said Gerald. He did not urge them 
to remain, and at the end of the game 
they took their departure. 

“You’ve a lively way of making a fel- 
low uncomfortable,” Gerald said, when 
the cousins were alone together. “I 
never saw a chap who could look such 
unutterable things. ’ ’ 

“I didn’t know I looked anything but 
disgust, and I could have uttered that 

115 


THE YOUNG MAN 


fast enough, if I had thought it would do 
any good.” 

“Sensible Tommy, to keep your opin- 
ions to yourself, or save them to venti- 
late in prayer-meeting where they will 
harm nobody! We’re not born just alike, 
you know, and we don’t all act just 
alike after we are born. For instance, 
there is Burt Hadley, and then again 
there is Tommy boy. Psalm-singing 
wouldn’t be the very nectar and am- 
brosia of existence for Burt, and I dare 
say you would find some of his recrea- 
tions as little to your taste.” 

“I should hope so. He isn’t a gentle- 
man, and I hope I’ll never have to hear 
a word from him again.” 

“I wouldn’t tell him my opinion, if I 
were in your place, or you might hear 
two words. Tommy, you’re awfully 
good, but did it ever occur to you that 
you’re not exactly exhilarating company 
for a person of my tastes?” 

The mixture of graciousness and inso- 
lence in this speech was intolerable. 
Tom was more indignant than ever, and 
116 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


this time he was not quite sure that his 
indignation was righteous. “I didn’t 
suppose I was very agreeable company,” 
he said, “but I hope I’m decent.” 

“Careful, Tommy, careful. Don’t 
lose your temper, for I like you. And 
I’ll tell you another little secret which 
you may find soothing — I don’t like 
Hadley.” 

“I’m glad to hear it. I wish you 
didn’t like his company.” 

“I’m not sure that I do. But com- 
pany of some sort a fellow must have. I 
feed on excitement, and when life gets 
tame it is intolerable. I’ve told you over 
and over that you don’t understand a 
word about it. A fellow of Hadley’s 
style diverts me — that is all.” 

“See here, Gerald,” Tom broke out, 
suddenly, “what would you do if Hadley 
should court your sister?” 

“I’d thrash him,” said Gerald, lan- 
guidly. 

“And yet he’s good enough company 
for you?” 

“Goodness! How you moral fellows 

117 


THE YOUNG MAN 


bore me! A man can look out for him- 
self, and a girl can’t. She doesn’t know 
what a fellow does, or is, and she 
wouldn’t know how to discriminate, if 
she did.” 

Tom thought that, of his two cousins, 
Nora was the better able to take care of 
herself, but he decided that it was dis- 
creet not to say so. “I confess I can’t 
see the difference,” was what he did 
say. “Maybe girls are more particular 
about their company than boys are, but 
there isn’t any reason why they should 
be. Your father and mother wouldn’t 
like to have Nora choose such company ,- 
and I don’t see why they shouldn’t ob- 
ject just as much when it’s you.” 

“Oh, as far as ordinary acquaintance 
is concerned, Hadley is all right. He 
goes in good society, you know. He 
isn’t a Chesterfield of elegance, but you 
can’t expect everything. And he has a 
mighty good heart.” 

“What kind of heart is that?” ques- 
tioned Tom, innocently. 

“Oh, he’s no sneak. He’ll stick by 
118 


FROM ML DDLEFIEL D 


you, if he pretends to. And he’ll lend 
you ten dollars now and then without 
making a howl about it. He’s free and 
generous, and all that sort of thing, you 
know.” 

Tom laughed. “I should think he 
might have been tolerably free with his 
money, and still have several things the 
matter with his heart,” he said. 4 ‘It is 
a very bad heart, as far as I can see. 
Honestly, Gerald, I haven’t any patience 
with these fellows, and I can’t bear to 
see them around here. You are making 
a splendid fight, but you need all the 
help you can get. And I think I ought 
to tell your father what I think. ’ ’ 

“Tell him, then!” said Gerald, in the 
same savage tone in which he had once 
before spoken the words. “Those fel- 
lows are regular visitors at the house. 
He can’t invite them to the parlor, and 
then object when they come to this room 
on my invitation.” 

This was quite true, and Tom made 
no answer. In a moment Gerald spoke 
again, but more mildly. 

119 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“I’ll tell you what, Tommy boy,’’ he 
said, “I think that, with the best inten- 
tions possible, you’ve got into the habit 
of paying entirely too much attention to 
other people’s business. A fellow who 
starts out in this world to be a reformer, 
needs an umbrella and rubber boots. It 
isn’t a comfortable sort of life. One is 
likely to encounter a great deal of 
weather, you know. And if I were you, 
I’d take the regulation road, and let 
other people do the same. You’re just 
a little officious, and people notice it.’’ 

A touch of indignation always quick- 
ened Tom’s tongue. “I’ve heard of 
some fellows who did that,” he said. 
“They took the safe, easy side of the 
road, and weren’t so officious as to inter- 
fere with the affairs of the poor wretch 
who had fallen among thieves. But I’d 
rather have been the good Samaritan, 
just the same.” 

“Don’t fire Bible at me. That’s tak- 
ing an unfair advantage. And say, 
Tommy boy, you’re an officious sort of 
chap, but I like you.” 

120 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER XII. 

tom’s visit to his homk. 

om went home for Christmas, and 
what a home-going it was! 
The little village seemed to 
have shrunken strangely, and the two 
small stores no longer seemed to him 
like the center of vast commercial enter- 
prises. But the love and cheer of the 
home-circle seemed greater than before. 
Pie noticed, with a quickened sense of 
appreciation, his mother’s instinctive 
refinement and Hester’s modest beauty. 
Even Teddy’s awkward loyalty and 
laborious imitation of his revered big 
brother touched him. 

“Say, Tom,” was Ted’s anxious 
query on the second morning, “how do 
you tie that necktie so’s the ends come 
out on different sides of the bow? If I’ve 
got to fix up, I’ve got to. You’ve turned 
so stylish, it wears a fellow all out to 
keep up with you.” 



121 


THE YOUNG MAN 


Tom laughed as he adjusted the gor- 
geous red and yellow necktie with which 
his brother had been wrestling. “So 
this is what you made the trip to town 
for last night,” he said. “Well, it is a 
cheerful affair, and no mistake. So I’ve 
grown stylish?” 

“Sure! You wear the same clothes 
you used to, but you brush them oftener. 
I s’ pose that makes the difference.” 

“Brushing one’s clothes is very good 
exercise, Teddy. I recommend it to 
you.” 

“It’s an awful bother — worse’n brush- 
ing your hair, and that’s bad enough, 
with mother always poking you up to it. 
She says you brushed yours without 
having to be told.” 

“I think she must be mistaken. She 
will make mistakes about you, too, after 
you have gone away.” 

“She’ll never make that one,” as- 
serted Teddy, with a dismal shake of the 
head. “She knows the other thing too 
well.” 

The neighbors came trooping in, 
122 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 

bringing good things to eat, and the 
news of the community besides. 

“Ma thought you might relish some 
of our sausage,’ ’ said ’Bial Griggs, 
looking into the cheerful kitchen. “She 
sent over a few pounds, an’ said she’d 
take it real hard if you’d got above 
eatin’ country sausage. And she put in 
a can of cherries off that tree in the 
yard. She said she guessed you’d re- 
member that there time you fell out of 
it.” 

“Remember! I should think I did! It 
seems to me I can feel the crack the 
doctor gave my arm when he set it, 
even yet. That comes of your wife’s 
generosity. She was just as free- 
hearted then as she is now, and she had 
told me to go into the tree and eat as 
many cherries as I possibly could.” 

“L,ike enough she did. Ma was al- 
ways free around the house, ‘kand!’ 
she says, ‘I’d just as leave go to the 
poorhouse as to set a skinny table.’ 
Wal, I see you remember, an’ I hope 
you won’t slight that sausage.” 

123 


THE YOUNG MAN 


’Bial went home and told his wife 
that Tom Floyd was just the same as 
ever. “He stands up straighter,” he 
said, “an’ at first I thought he was a 
little stiff an’ set up. But he’s just as 
interested in old times as ever — remem- 
bered about you giving him cherries, an’ 
all.” 

“Of course he did!” was the triumph- 
ant response. “I always told you Tom 
Floyd was all right,” and this soon be- 
came the verdict of the neighborhood. 

Of course it became necessary to pay 
visits to his old friends, who loaded him 
with kindnesses, and joyfully and sys- 
tematically set to work to ruin his diges- 
tion. At ’Bial Griggs’ he sat down to a 
table which looked like an oasis in the 
desert, with tall dishes of preserves ris- 
ing here and there like palm-trees, and 
lesser growths of jelly and marmalade 
between, too numerous to receive serious 
attention. 

“After all, I haven’t had much time 
at home,” he said to his mother, regret- 
fully, the night after Christmas. He 

124 


FROM MI DDL E FI ELD 


was to go back to the city on the mor- 
row, and it might be long before the 
coming of another holiday. ‘ ‘ I’ve been 
all about the neighborhood, and saved 
only this one evening to spend alone 
with you.” 

“I know, Tom. I thought we would 
have more time, and I’m sorry, for I’m 
a poor hand to put my thoughts on 
paper, and there are a great many things 
I wanted to talk to you about. But I 
won’t complain, for it’s been a comfort 
to see you, and to see you don’t lose 
your love of home and home folks.” 

“Why should I? I’ve been away from 
home just long enough to realize that 
home folks are better than any other 
kind.” 

“But are you happy and contented?” 

Tom thought for a moment. “Yes,” 
he said, “I am happy and con- 
tented, I believe. I have learned how 
to do my work, and I like it well enough. 
Uncle is good to me — very good, on the 
whole, considering that I try him in 
some particulars.” And he told, with 

125 


p 


THE YOUNG MAN 


good-natured laughter, the story of his 
own “ofhciousness.” 

“There is one thing I want to ask 
you,” his mother Ventured. “You were 
brought up in a very simple way, and 
you never have been among rich people 
or stylish people before. Do you ever 
feel any temptation to do as they do, or 
wish you were able to?” 

Tom’s eyes met hers frankly. “Yes,” 
he said. “And I don’t know why I 
should be tempted in that way, for I’ve 
learned that they’re not nearly as happy 
as we are, and that they are continually 
wishing to change places with those 
they think above them. Aunt Lucinda 
mourns over her poverty every day, and 
Nora, who has the least snobbishness of 
any one in the family, parades the 
household economies as you or Hester 
never would in the world. And yet, 
mother, to be just as honest as I know 
how to be, I do fall into the way of look- 
ing at things with their eyes, and mak- 
ing too much out of things that are not 

really important. For instance, I be- 
126 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


lieve I am beginning to be a little cow- 
ardly over the prospect of being a poor 
man all my life. I see inconveniences 
where I never saw them before. I think, 
sometimes, I am losing a little of my 
wholesome independence.” 

“I hope not. I’d be sorry to think 
my boy was ashamed of hard work and 
plain living.” 

“I don’t think I am quite ashamed of 
hard work, but I think sometimes I’m 
inclined to want too much for my work. 

I believe I’d be quite satisfied to go on 
working hard all my life, if there were a 
substantial return for it.” 

“Your father and I have been very 
happy.” It was a great deal for the 
reticent mother to say, and the words 
were spoken tremulously. U I don’t be- 
lieve money could have made us any^ 
happier. Sometimes I’ve wished that 
I had time for reading, and for seeing 
something of the world, but those things 
are not of so much account, it seems to 
me, if you can take comfort in your own 
home, add feel you’ve got everything to 

127 


THE YOUNG MAN 


live for there. It seems to me I’d be 
sorry and anxious if I thought you had 
set your heart on being happy in some 
other way.” 

“I haven’t set my heart, mother. In- 
deed, I am more sure than I’ve ever 
been that the way we have always lived 
is the best and safest. I’m merely 
making a clean breast of everything, 
even to telling you that I’ve come, with- 
out knowing it, to like electric lights 
better than coal-oil lamps.” He laughed 
and smoothed her hair as he said this, 
and she was reassured. He was the 
only person who caressed her. Her 
husband did not know how, and Hester 
partook of her mother’s reserved nature. 

“And how about your pledge, Tom? 
Is it hard to keep that, with so many 
things to take up your attention?” 

“Not as hard, in some ways, as I 
thought it would be.” He told of the 
young people of Dr. Cushing’s church, 
and of the rainy night which had 
brought such a blessing. “The worst 

trouble isn’t with other people, mother. 

128 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


It’s with myself. I find that the more I 
associate with my cousins and with the 
other young people I have met in the 
city, the less I like to be thought 
‘queer. ’ The more friendly they are 
with me, the more I am tempted to keep 
my religious notions to myself. ’ ’ 

“I wouldn’t do that. If their friend- 
ship is worth having, they will respect 
you all the more for standing by what 
you believe.” 

“I know it, mother, and I mean to 
try. Pray for* me as hard as you can, 
and love me as much as you know how ? 
and, somehow or other, I’ll try to pull 
through.” 

He kissed her in the old, hearty 
fashion, and something told her that she 
had not lost her boy. 

9 129 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XIII. 

NORA’S AMBITION. 

H!]hen Tom returned to his uncle’s, 
'W he saw from Nora’s face that 
something was wrong. 

“Gerald has been out every night,” 
she confided to him. “Papa hasn’t 
found it out yet, for he slips away very 
quietly, and comes in when all in the 
house are asleep. But I haven’t once 
forgotten my promise to help, and I’ve 
watched for him every night. I’ve 
talked with him twice, but he only 
laughs at me.” 

Tom sighed. “I’m afraid I oughtn’t 
to have gone away,” he said. “You’ve 
been carrying double burden, and that 
isn’t fair.” 

“Yes, it is. It’s absurd to suppose 
you can’t spend Christmas with your 
mother. If Gerald hasn’t enough back- 
bone to last him a week, how is he go- 
ing to get along through life? I’ll tell 

130 





FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


you what I do wish, though: I wish we 
had never let Burt Hadley’s crowd into 
the house.’’’ 

“So do I.” 

“It wasn’t all my fault, and yet I be- 
lieve now I could have stopped it, if I 
had gone to papa. Ah, well, there’s 
nothing we can do, so far as I can see, 
but to brace in, and make the best fight 
possible. Say, Tom!” There was a 
look of something like shyness on her 
honest, almost boyish, face. 

“What is it, Nora?” he asked, gently. 
The thought came to him, as it had 
often come lately, of what a mother like 
his own would be to this warm-hearted 
girl. 

“There’s no one else to talk to about 
my dream, and I must talk to you. Just 
look at me!” She fell into one of her 
favorite poses, with both hands behind 
her, and her head thrown back. At 
that moment she looked quite capable of 
exploring a new continent or leading a 
forlorn hope. “Do I look like a society 
person?” 


131 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“Not exactly. L,et’s be devoutly 
thankful for it. ” 

“I’m not sure that I am. I’ in merely 
facing the facts as they are. A daugh- 
ter who is only average-looking, and has 
no style, is an expensive luxury — espec- 
ially” — a lovely warm color overswept 
her face as she hesitated — “especially 
when she has determined that she will 
never — that she will not be married off 
for a consideration, as calico and ging- 
ham are sold over the counter. Now, 
don’t you believe that you and I can, 
between us, persuade papa that it will 
be cheaper and more sensible for him to 
save the money from evening gowns and 
carriage-hire, and send me through the 
medical college?” 

“The medical college!” stammered 
Tom, in some dismay. The truth is, he 
was rather old-fashioned in his ideas of 
women. He liked them to be like his 
mother — gentle and home-loving, strong 
in intelligence and conviction, but using 
both modestly and within certain quite 
clearly-defined limits. The spectacle of 

132 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


a girl like Nora, born with all the rest- 
less desire for activity and achievement 
that the most adventurous boy can 
know, was quite new to him. Poor 
Nora! This time she had found a rather 
unsympathetic counselor. “ Isn’t doc- 
toring too hard for a woman?” he 
asked, dubiously. 

“Hard? I hope so,” was the scorn- 
ful response. “I’ve been longing all 
my life to try something hard, and I’ve 
never found it yet — nothing, that is, ex- 
cept sitting still and looking pretty. 
That wears me out completely, but the 
other things” — she snapped her fingers 
to show how uttterly insignificant she 
considered the “other things.” “They 
told me when I was little that playing 
ball was too hard for me to play, and 
fences too high for me to climb, but I 
could wear Gerald out in ten minutes at 
either employment. When I grew up 
they told me rowing was ‘too hard,’ and 
Greek and the higher mathematics ‘too 
exacting’ —which was a polite way of 
saying the same thing. But I’d rather 

133 


THE YOUNG MAN 


row than to eat, and I’m not ashamed of 
my grades, though I’m not saying this 
to boast of them. Ever since I can 
remember, I’ve wanted to be a doctor. 
I’m not a bit chicken-hearted, and I’ve 
a stock of nerves that I will warrant to 
stand any strain. I’ in not quite so sorry 
for sick people, maybe, as a doctor 
ought to be, but I think that’s princi- 
pally because I know it will be such fun 
to cure them. The long and short of it 
is, Tom, that my heart’s in the busi- 
ness, and it isn’t anywhere else.” 

Her face lighted and flashed and 
glowed. Tom felt almost as if he had 
never known her before. He had often 
thought her lacking in earnestness and 
feeling. Certainly he could not think 
this now. He was quite carried away 
with her mood, and ready to promise his 
aid to any extent. 

“Surely I’ll help you in any way i 
can, if you wish it so much,” he said. 
“ I don’t know what I could do, 
though.” 

“You can help me with papa. It’s 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


quite too much to hope for mamma, but 
she will get used to it. I don’t ask you 
to say anything to anybody, unless it 
should come in your way; but if it does, 
do, please, speak of my hobby a little 
bit tolerantly — as if it were something 
more than a girlish whim.” 

“I’ll gladly do that,” he said, but 
thought it scarcely likely that such an 
opportunity would come. But it did, 
and in the way he least expected. 

When he came home in the evening, 
all the members of the household were 
out, except his aunt, who was nursing a 
headache, and did not appear. He had 
not seen her in the morning, but as he 
passed her door she called him, and he 
went in. 

“I am glad to see you back,” she 
said — not warmly, indeed, but with 
something like sincerity in her tone. 
“I think Gerald must be lonesome with- 
out you. I have hardly seen him since 
you went away.” 

All her thoughts centered on Gerald. 
Perhaps she was, in truth, more anxious 

135 


THE YOUNG MAN 


about him than she had ever been will- 
ing to admit. 

“I have seen him for only a minute,” 
Tom said. “He is out somewhere to- 
night, I believe.” 

“He is often out now. He has so 
many friends, and such unusual gifts.” 

“Indeed he has!” assented Tom, with 
such heartiness that his aunt looked at 
him with more interest than she had 
ever shown before. 

“He plays beautifully, you know. I 
don’t suppose you understand music, but 
those who do, think him a prodigy. Sit 
down, won’t you, Thomas?” 

Tom thought he could like his aunt 
better if she would not persist in calling 
him “Thomas,” which was not his 
name, and which he most cordially 
hated. He sat down, gingerly enough, 
in the midst of pillows and air-cushions. 

“It’s very lonely here, when I am ill 
so much,” his aunt resumed. “Nora is, 
I must say, an excellent nurse, but she 
is very thoughtless, and often leaves me 
for hours at a time.” 


136 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


“She has a talent for that sort of 
thing,” Tom said, nervously, anxious to 
get his word in. “What a splendid 
physician she would make!” 

“Oh, I dare say,” Mrs. Floyd agreed, 
rather languidly. 

“She would enjoy it, too.” 

“No doubt. Nora enjoys everything 
but what other young girls consider 
pleasures.” 

“There are different tastes about such 
things. Gerald, for instance, couldn’t 
be happy if he were cut off from the 
things he enjoys most.” Tom con- 
sidered this an exceptionally happy 
thought, but it did not strike his aunt 
as he hoped it might. 

“That is quite a different matter,” 
she said, coldly. “ Gerald is a genius, 
and geniuses must have freedom. I 
wish he were understood and rightly 
estimated. I am the only one who 
recognizes his gifts — poor boy!” 

She was quite overcome. Tom could 
not bear to leave her in this condition, 
and he felt quite helpless. However, he 

•137 


THE YOUNG MAN 


chanced upon the happy expedient of 
offering to read the daily paper to her, 
and this proposition seemed entirely sat- 
isfactory. 

“The society column first, please,’ ’ 
she said, and Tom cheerfully read on 
and on through accounts of pink teas 
and rosebud luncheons, until Mrs. Floyd 
fell into a comfortable doze. Then he 
stole away and left her. 

It was past midnight when Gerald re- 
turned, and when Tom went to break- 
fast next morning he tapped on the door 
of his cousin’s room, only to receive g. 
sleepy “What?” from within. 

“I’m coming in,” Tom called. “It’s 
seven o’clock.” 

“What do I care?” Gerald demanded. 
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” 

“ Isn’t it getting toward working 
hours?” 

“I’m not working any more.” 

“Not working!” cried Tom, in con- 
sternation. 

“No. That brute of a city editor 
called me up and complained that I was 

138 


FROM MI DDL EFIEL D 

irregular in my hours. I told him what 
I thought of him, and he told me what 
he thought of me. I’ve quit, or I’ve 
been discharged, and I’m not in the 
least particular as to which you call it.” 

139 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XIV. 


GERALD IN TROUBLE. 


pjftgiE Gerald had been depressed and 
dg|l humiliated, Tom might, per- 
haps, have been sorry for him. 
But he was quite determined to regard 
himself as a hero, and to glory in his 
own independence. 

“I can get a position with The People 
any day,” he said. “They would be 
only too glad to take a crack reporter 
from The Call.” 

“But surely yon wouldn’t work on 
The People said Tom, in horror. 

“Why not?” 

“I’d sooner say, ‘Why?’ There isn’t 
a reason, so far as I can see, why any 
decent fellow should have anything to 
do with such a sheet.” 

“It seems you have had something to- 
do with it, or you would not have such 
a decided opinion on the subject.” 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


“I read one number, and I’ve been 
ashamed of myself ever since.” 

“I believe you were born in the objec- 
tive case. A newspaper is a newspaper, 
and news is news. Your discriminations 
wear the life out of me. What the peo- 
ple are bound to have is news, and I 
don’t see why they shouldn’t get it as 
well from me as from some one else.” 

“I don’t call coarse gossip ‘news.’ I 
call it coarse gossip, provided it isn’t 
anything worse — and generally it is. To 
dish up real or imaginary foulness for 
the breakfast-tables of low-minded peo- 
ple isn’t decent business, and I’d be 
ashamed to do it.” 

“So I’m not decent!” There leaped 
into Gerald’s eyes a dangerous fire. 

“Yes, you are. That’s why I’m so 
sure you won’t do it.” Tom’s eyes met 
his unflinchingly. For the first time 
Gerald wavered before that steady gaze. 

“I suppose you want me turned out of 
doors,” he said. When other avenues 
were closed, he always took to martyr- 
dom. 


141 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“No, I don’t. But, Gerald, what are 
your fine feelings good for, if they don’t 
keep you out of such places?” 

“You talk as if I were a candidate for 
the penitentiary. I tell you a fellow 
must do what he can. If the people 
want to read, why shouldn’t I write 
what they will read?” 

“That sort of argument will do for a 
saloon-keeper, but it isn’t worthy of a 
fellow with your brain in his head. I 
don’t need to do dirty work just to keep 
somebody else from doing it. It’s my 
business to let it alone, and to use all the 
influence I have to make the other fel- 
low do the same.” 

“No doubt about your using your ‘in- 
fluence’ fast enough,” growled Gerald. 

“In other words,” said Tom, good- 
naturedly, “there isn’t the slightest 
doubt in the world about my ‘officious- 
ness.’ I suppose that’s so. But when 
I think of your working on a paper that 
refined people won’t handle except with 
tongs, I confess it makes me hot all 
over. Don’t do it, Gerald.” 

142 


FROM MI DDL E FI ELD 


“I’m not going to do it,” answered 
Gerald, carelessly. “I haven’t any high- 
falutin moral objections, but the salary 
is contemptible, and the office is nothing 
but a hole. I wouldn’t live an hour in 
such a place.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

“Paint a picture. I’ve slaved like a 
dog for two months, and now I’m going 
to take time for a breath.” 

Tom sighed, but said nothing. He 
was beginning to realize that his com- 
pact with regard to Gerald was an ex- 
tremely exacting one. 

Since his return, Tom had noticed a 
change in his aunt’s manner toward 
him. She always spoke to him politely 
when he came in, and even interested 
herself so far, on one occasion, as to give 
some languid advice with regard to the 
way of parting his hair. Once he over- 
heard her in conversation with her hus- 
band: 

“Tom is really not so bad as he might 
be, considering,” was her vague charac- 
terization. “I think he has learned a 

143 


THE YOUNG MAN 


great deal from Gerald — the dear boy 
has been so kind to notice him.” 

Whereat Tom smiled, remembering, 
his own “officiousness’ ’ in forcing his 
society upon his cousin. 

He felt the danger of Gerald’s position 
so keenly that it seemed to him he must 
have help. He had learned that Nora, 
willing as she was, had very little influ- 
ence where her brother was concerned. 
Tom felt that there was only one person 
of whose tactfulness and right feeling he 
could be sure; so he gathered up all his 
slender stock of courage and went to 
Marjorie Deane. 

It was not his first visit to the Deane 
home, for the committee of the Endeavor 
Society met here often, and he had come 
to feel quite comfortable in the stately 
old hall, on whose hearth a great log- 
fire burned, and in whose chimney-cor- 
ner were the arm-chairs which had be- 
longed to Marjorie’s great-grandparents. 
He sat in one of these arm-chairs to- 
night, and the lovely girl who sat in the 

144 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


other knotted her brow over the problem 
he presented. 

“I don’t feel sure that I can do a 
thing,” she said. “If I am kind to Ger- 
ald, he presumes that I approve his con- 
duct. If I am cool to him — and that I 
must be when he chooses his friends in 
the Burt Hadley set — he feels like a 
martyr. I have seen what you are try- 
ing to do for him, and I know what it 
means. But I am not at all sure that I 
can help you.” 

“Young ladies have so much influ- 
ence,” he pleaded, awkwardly. He was 
not often shy, but to-night the grace 
and ease of her manner made him just a 
little afraid of her. He almost wished 
she was as blunt as his cousin Nora. 
No, on second thought, he did not wish 
anything of the kind. 

“Sometimes they have, and I have 
tried to have with Gerald, but — I think 
he is quite determined to misunderstand. 
He was my little playmate, you know, 
and I could not bear to give him up. I 
could not bear to believe that his gifts 

10 145 


THE YOUNG MAN 


would not come to the best. I told him 
I would be his friend, and so would 
many others who could help him more, 
but that he must give up, for his own 
sake, those who were doing him harm 
through their pretended friendship. I 
meant to be kind, but” — she smiled 
slightly — U I don’t enjoy spectacular re- 
pentance. Gerald had a habit of coming 
with a picturesque confession and asking 
me to forgive him and help him to take 
up life again and try to endure it. I 
tried to throw him upon his own man- 
hood and sense of honor. When every- 
thing else failed, I told him he must 
choose, that, while I would never cease 
being anxious about him and interested 
in him, he must give up that set of 
young men, or else give up coming here 
in the brotherly way of the past. He 
takes this hard, at times, and I think it 
will be quite impossible ever to convince 
him that I meant it kindly.” 

That she had indeed meant it kindly 
the tears in her earnest eyes showed. 
“If I can do anything,” she resumed, in 

146 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


a moment, “anything that will be truly 
helpful, I will be glad to do it. But one 
must try to be true, you know.” 

“Yes,” said Tom, “and that’s often 
very hard — just how to be true and char- 
itable at the same time, you know — 
that’s the hardest of all.” He looked 
at her closely to make sure she caught 
his meaning, for words did not come to 
him easily to-night. 

“I know,” she answered, sympathet- 
ically. 

“I’m sure you have a great deal more 
real influence over Gerald than you 
would have if you gave in to all his 
erratic notions. I only ask you to use 
it.” 

“And I will, if there is a way.” 

“Thank you — thank you very much, 
Miss Deane. I’ in afraid I’ve stayed a 
long, long time.” 

“Indeed you have not. You will come 
again?” She walked with him to the 
door, and he could not help thinking 
how much more attractive she was at 
home than in a crowd. 

147 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“Thank you very much, Miss Deane. 
Yes, I shall be glad to come again.” 

He hastened back, and on the thresh- 
old of his uncle’s house he met Gerald. 
His cousin wore a hard, set face. 
“What’s the matter?” asked Tom. 
“Matter enough,” answered Gerald, 
grimly. “Father and I have quarreled, 
and I’m going to leave home.” 

148 


\ 


FROM MI DDL E FI ELD 


CHAPTER XV. 


CONCERNING GERALD AND NORA. 



fOM had always feared a rupture 
between Gerald and his father, 
and it now seemed that the 
worst had come. Gerald was so weak 
that there could not be a moment’s safe- 
ty for him away from his home. Tom 
felt as he might if he had already seen 
his cousin irretrievably lost. He went 
to his uncle, but it did no good. 

“You saw how it was before,” said 
Peter Floyd, ^irritably. “You have a 
great confidence in your ability to set 
the world right, but you’ll find there is 
more of this world than a fence-corner 
on your father’s farm. I can’t have any 
more interference between me and my 
family, and what’s more, I won’t!” 

Tom went away discouraged. He 
found nothing in the book of experience 
harder to learn than the simple fact that, 
in most natures, the good and bad are 



THE YOUNG MAN 


mingled. He had been wont to sup- 
pose that people were either good or 
bad, and to classify them promptly ac- 
cording to this supposition. It was puz- 
zling to find that the good and bad were 
to be found in every one, and especially 
in himself. Not only so, but in many 
cases it was exceedingly difficult to tell 
which predominated. Here was his 
uncle, for instance, for whom Tom felt 
the sincerest respect and affection. How 
could one be blind to the fact that this 
uncle had an irascible temper, and was 
peculiarly hot-headed and inconsiderate 
in dealing with his own son? 

Ah, well, we need not judge. That is 
almost as great a comfort as the thought 
that we are not to be judged with man’s 
superficial judgment. 

Gerald went away, refusing to tell 
Tom where he was going. His refusal 
was not unkind. Indeed, he was pecu- 
liarly tender at the parting. 

“I’ve liked you, Tommy boy,” he 
said. “Good people usually bore me, 
and I won’t say I have never been bored 

150 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


by yon, but you are the best of the lot. 
I’m going my own way, but I’m not 
going to forget you. When you can be 
proud of me, I will come back.” 

He must have given his address to his 
mother, but Nora did not know what it 
was, as Tom ascertained at once. The 
girl was in bitter sorrow. 

4 ‘It’s what I’ve always been afraid 
of,” she said. “It needs a cooler nature 
than papa’s or mine to manage Gerald. 
I wonder why things go so badly with 
some people, anyhow!” 

Tom might have been at some other 
time officious enough to give an opinion, 
but he had no temptation in this direc- 
tion to-day. This new anxiety was the 
heaviest he had ever known. 

It was only a week later that Tom 
saw Gerald coming from the office of 
The People. He had guessed that his 
cousin would, in an emergency, seek 
work there, and he had, therefore, 
haunted the place for several days. At 
sight of him Gerald scowled, and then 

151 


THE YOUNG MAN 


smiled. Evidently, he meant to make 
the best of the encounter. 

“No use to ask you to go with me to 
the Halcyon, I suppose?” he queried, 
gayly. “I’ve got an assignment there.” 

The Halcyon was a place of so-called 
“entertainment” of a grade between the 
cheap theater and the concert saloon. 

“Not in the least. Any use in asking 
you to go with me to call on Miss 
Deane?” 

Gerald’s face changed instantly. It 
was as if there had come a vision of the 
world from which he had fallen. 

As a matter of fact, Tom was not on 
his way to Marjorie’s home. He had 
simply obtained her permission to come 
at any time when he could persuade 
Gerald to come with him. 

For a moment his cousin seemed to 
waver. “Miss Deane doesn’t want to 
see me,” he objected. 

“Yes, she does. She said we would 
both be welcome.” 

“I’m not dressed for a call.” He 
laughed as he glanced himself over. 

152 


FROM MI DDLEFIELD 


Already the influence of liis new asso- 
ciations seemed to have asserted itself, 
for his dress was untidy and his face 
unshaven. 

“I’ll wait for you.” 

“No use; I won’t go. No, Tommy 
boy, I said I’d go my way, and I will. 
Since you won’t bear me company, 
good-bye.” 

He hurried away, as if afraid of Tom’s 
persuasions. It was very discouraging, 
and Tom walked on with a heavy heart. 
He went at once to his aunt, told her 
that he had seen Gerald, and that he 
was well. She was not a wise mother, 
and, no doubt, she was more to blame 
for Gerald’s misdeeds than was anyone 
else, except himself. But Tom had 
read the heart-sickness in her eyes, and 
was sorry for her. 

“Did he send any message to me?” 
she asked, eagerly. 

“There wasn’t time. He was hurry- 
ing on before I realized it.” 

“He is so very busy. Oh, well, I’ll 
hear from him.” 


153 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“So I supposed.” 

4 ‘I can talk to you, Thomas, and I 
cannot talk to the others. Yon admire 
the dear boy, and have some apprecia- 
tion of his gifts. The others wish to 
deal with him as they would with a 
common nature, which is clearly impos- 
sible. An unusual talent should be cul- 
tivated, you know.” 

“That is the way I feel about Nora,” 
said Tom. This was awkward enough, 
but Tom had judged that his aunt’s 
heart was unusually tender to-day, as 
indeed it was. 

“Nora is very different,” she said 
again, but her tone was softer than when 
she had mentioned the matter before. 
“Still, I do think she has rather marked 
ability. I have sometimes thought that 
she would shine more in a professional 
life than in society. Socially — I don’t 
mind saying, for I know you will never 
breathe it to her — Nora has been, and 
will, I fear, continue to be, a disappoint- 
ment.” 

As Tom had heard his aunt say the 

154 > 


FROM MIDDL&FIELD 


same tiling to Nora herself at least a 
hundred times, he was not overborne by 
this secret. 

“I am sure she would be a great suc- 
cess as a physician,” he said, deter- 
mined to follow up his advantage. 

“Oh, I have no doubt. And there 
are very praiseworthy women in that 
profession. But one’s own daughter — 
that is quite different, you see.” 

Tom did not see, inasmuch as the 
praiseworthy women were, no doubt, 
own daughters also. But he did not 
mention his dullness of vision. 

“It would certainly make Nora very 
happy,” he said, which was an unfortu- 
nate remark. 

“It is not a question of happiness, but 
of duty,” she said, rather severely. 
“Nora owes a duty to her family and to 
society. It is not as if she were obliged 
to choose a means of livelihood. Some 
women must do this, of* course, and it is 
right for them to make the best of 
things. But Nora has been brought up 
in a certain circle, and certain things 

155 


THE* YOUNG MAN 


are expected of her. In these things 
she is, as I have said, disappointing. I 
must be frank enough to admit that she 
is not just what her family and her social 
circle have a right to expect. This 
notion of hers is, I fear, a part of it all. 
She wishes to escape the duties which 
naturally belong to her, and so she 
rushes off into something that is new 
and odd. Still, I agree with you that 
Nora has ability. And if her idea 
should prove to be lasting, I shall — I 
cannot say encourage it — no, I cannot 
feel that it would be right to encourage 
it, but — I will consider it.” 

Tom told this to Nora, and was great- 
ly surprised at the way she took it. He 
had expected her to be in raptures. In- 
stead of this, she stood quite still, and 
did not answer him for a moment. 

“It is too good,” she said, quietly, “a 
great deal too good and beautiful for 
me.” 

The tears forced their way, and in a 
moment flooded her cheeks. It is only 
a rarely beautiful woman to whom tears 

156 




FROM MIDDLEFIELD 

are becoming, and Nora was merely 
bright and vivacious-looking — not beau- 
tiful. Yet she had never seemed to 
Tom so lovely and womanlike as she did 
at this moment. 

“I am not good enough,” she said. 
“But I will try to be better; oh, I will 
try so hard to be better!” 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XVI. 

TOM PRESIDENT OF THE Y. P. S. C. E. 

H|herE are you going?” Nora asked 
'yS of Tom, one evening, as he 
came down stairs prepared to 

go out. 

“You are just as curious as other 
women, aren’t you? What a genius you 
will be at finding out people’s symptoms! 
Well, I’m not in the least unwilling to 
have you know that I’m going to a 
Christian Endeavor business meeting at 
the church.” 

“So I guessed. It’s a good thing you 
have your new suit on. You’ll need to 
look your best.” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, never you mind why. You’ll 
find out,” and with this mysterious 
speech Nora whisked out of the room. 

Tom could not help wondering what 
she meant, but Nora was often enigmat- 
ical, and it was quite impossible to keep 

158 





FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


up with her when she was in one of 
these moods. 

Matters had changed somewhat in the 
Christian Endeavor Society of Dr. Cush- 
ing’s church since Tom’s arrival in the 
city six months before. The prayer- 
meeting hour was no longer filled with 
an elocutionary and musical entertain- 
ment. There were many who took part 
voluntarily every week, and all of those 
who attended regularly gave evidence of 
a far deeper interest than they had 
shown before. 

Of course this change had not come 
about without the display of some oppo- 
sition. There were those who thought 
a simple prayer- meeting service “so 
stupid and old-fashioned, you know,” 
and who predicted that no one would 
come if the “attractions” were given up. 
But all continued to come except the ob- 
jectors themselves, and even they were 
obliged to look in once in a while to see 
how the new plan worked. 

Doctor Jonathan Edwards Cushing 
was among those who failed to fall in 

159 


THE YOUNG MAN 


with the new order. “Such methods 
may work very well in the rural dis- 
tricts, ” he admitted, “but they are, in 
the very nature of things, unsuited to 
the cultured youth of a large city. The 
young man who seems to be leading this 
movement is from the country, and, 
though singularly open-hearted and well- 
intentioned, he is manifestly unfitted to 
be the guide of those whose advantages 
have been so far superior to his own.” 

The “young man” referred to in this 
carefully elaborated sentence was, of 
course, Tom Floyd, who was quite inno- 
cent of the fact that he was leading a 
movement of any sort. Tom had his 
ignorance to thank for a great many 
things in those days. 

Marjorie Deane heard this speech of 
Dr. Cushing’s, and something in the 
thoughtful look which blended with her 
smile made the great man ill at ease. 

“There are different kinds of ad van- 
tages, are there not?” she asked, in the 

tone of one who seriously seeks informa- 
160 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


tion. But the Doctor did not conde- 
scend to answer her. 

The attendance at the meeting to- 
night was unusually good, for the com- 
mittee had judiciously ordained that a 
social and refreshments should follow 
the business hour. 

It was not until the report of the nom- 
inating committee was read that Tom 
guessed the meaning of Nora’s mysteri- 
ous manner. Then all became clear to 
him, for the committee heartily recom- 
mended the election of Mr. Tom Floyd 
to the presidency of the society. 

Who could ever have thought of such 
a thing? It was preposterous — clearly 
so. Why, here were half a dozen young 
men, and as many more young women, 
who were college graduates, and who 
knew how to do everything. And he, — 
why, he had no gifts at all, except what 
he was sometimes tempted to call a tal- 
ent for minding other people’s business. 

He tried to say something of all this 
to the society now, but he was not espe- 
cially fortunate in the attempt. He did, 
11 . 161 


t 


THE YOUNG MAN 


indeed, manage to dwell at some length 
on his lack of speaking ability, but when 
he had taken his seat, the chairman of 
the committee — who was that same dea- 
con who had led the very first meeting 
that Tom attended — remarked, smil- 
ingly, “After the excellent speech Mr. 
Floyd has made concerning his inability 
to make a speech, I am sure we shall be 
justified in not believing a word he says 
on the subject.” 

This so unnerved him that he was 
afraid to make a sound, and he was 
voted in without an opposing voice. 

He had never been so embarrassed in 
his life as he was when the young peo- 
ple crowded about him to shake hands 
and offer their congratulations. “I 
might as well be the President of the 
United States and all the cabinet,” he 
said, helplessly, to Marjorie Deane. 
Usually, he was as little burdened with 
self-consciousness as with self-conceit; 
but to-night he felt his deficiencies and 
his limitations as he had never felt them 
before. 


162 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


“When will your public installation 
occur?” asked Nora, when he had told 
her all about it. 

Tom laughed. “I think I’ve had 
quite enough of that already,” he said. 
“I mean, now all is done and can’t be 
undone, to slip into the work as quietly 
as I can. ” 

“But you will be president from now 
on?” 

“Yes, I suppose so. How did you 
know I was to be president at all?” 

“Marjorie told me. She got it from 
Bessie, who was a member of the com- 
mittee. I suppose she thought the fam- 
ily would feel honored, so she let me 
into the secret. But say, Tom, I’m 
going to Endeavor next Sunday night, 
to see how you do it.” 

“Are you, really?” He meant the 
words to be cordial, but perhaps they 
did not sound so. In truth, it seemed 
that if anything would make his duties 
harder, it would be to have the keen- 
eyed and sharp-tongued Nora sitting by 
as critic. But how could he say so, how 

163 


THE YOUNG MAN 


could he even think anything so ungra- 
cious, when he had so often begged her 
to go to the meetings with him, and 
begged in vain? So in a moment he 
added, warmly, “I wish you would go.” 

“Wish I would go! What do you say 
that for? I am going. There are some 
things about me that aren’t nice, but 
saying what I don’t mean isn’t one of 
them.” Which was certainly true. If 
Nora erred in speech, it was not through 
the lack of sincerity so much as through 
the injudicious use of it. 

She did go to the meeting, and, to 
Tom’s surprise, she did not criticise. 
“It does seem a little like the real 
thing,” she said, on the way home. 

“Why, did you think we were all 
hypocrites?” Tom asked in reply to her 
remark. 

“Oh, not just hypocrites. Some, I 
know, take to religion naturally, and go 
that way as a matter of course. But 
there are a great many who seem to be 
as sincere in that as they are in other 
things — and not a bit more so. It’s like 

164 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


a department store, you know — so muck 
religion, so much business, so much so- 
ciety. You can get your bill and your 
exchange check anywhere, and have 
your goods transferred; but you’d die of 
surprise if you should find shoes with 
the dress-goods, or china with the canned 
goods.” 

“Now, Nora,” expostulated Tom, 
“you criticise the church-members you 
meet in society because they don’t talk 
to you about religion, and yet, whenever 
I’ve tried to say a word on the subject, 
you have been so impatient that I 
couldn’t have gone on if I tried ever so 
hard.” 

“Maybe I have. I’m not complaining 
of you and Marjorie and the others of 
your kind. I’m only talking about those 
who run their lives on the department- 
store plan. Didn’t I tell you that the 
meeting to-night sounded like the real 
thing?” 

Nora seemed to have changed in many 
ways during these last few weeks. She 
was more seriously attentive to her 

165 


THE YOUNG MAN 


studies than she had ever been before. 

“Pm going to surprise you all with 
one set of grades before I graduate,” she 
said. “I can do some things if I try. 
I’ve discovered lately that I’ve never 
half tried.” 

She was, on the whole, more respect- 
ful to her mother, though her manner at 
this point was by no means above criti- 
cism. 

“When you’ve been ‘that Nora Floyd’ 
for nearly eighteen years,” she confided 
to Tom, “you can’t metamorphose your- 
self and be ‘Miss Floyd, M. D.,’ all at 
once. But you can keep on experiment- 
ing upon yourself, and experiments are 
interesting, too, when you really come 
to think about it.” 

166 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER XVII. 



GERALD AT HOOLIGAN’S HALL. 

OM did not give up the effort to 
find. Gerald, though he felt he 
could do but little, at the best. 
Gerald now had a night assignment, and 
was busy at the only hours when Tom 
had leisure. He -stubbornly refused to 
tell where he was boarding, evidently 
through the determination that Tom 
should not visit him. He met his 
cousin pleasantly enough, when they 
chanced upon each other in the street, 
but when Tom proposed that they spend 
an hour together Gerald immediately 
pleaded an engagement or pressing 
duties. 

One day, as Tom was coming from 
his work, he yielded, as he had often 
done before, to his impulse to turn out 
of his way and pass the office of The 
People . He still felt that in some sense 
he was his cousin’s keeper, and that he 

167 


THE YOUNG MAN 


was responsible for the use of his slight 
influence over Gerald. 

He did not need to go to the office. 
As he passed a low saloon and “music” 
hall, he saw Gerald lounging carelessly 
against the counter, with a glass of beer 
in his hand. Burt Hadley was with 
him, and the two were laughing over 
some joke which had just passed be- 
tween them. Tom went home, and 
straight to his aunt’s sitting-room. 

“Aunt Lucinda,” he said, “I wish 
you would tell me where Gerald lives. 
He is in danger, and it may be I can 
help him.” 

“In danger! My precious boy! O 
tell me what, Tom! I shall die if you 
don’t tell me. Is spme one plotting 
against him? Why don’t you tell me?” 

“Please be calm, aunt. Yes, there 
are those who plot against Gerald, but 
not in the way you seem to think. 
What I mean is that he is in bad com- 
pany, and strongly tempted to do wrong, 
and that we must do all we can to save 
' him.” 


168 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


“You are against him, too, and you 
have pretended to be his friend! That 
is the way — everyone is against him. 
Nobody understands him.” And she 
broke into tears and buried her face 
among the pillows. 

The contrast between Mrs. Floyd in 
her customary dignity and Mrs. Floyd 
in tears was a peculiarly striking one. 
I do not like to reveal his uncharitable- 
ness, but I am bound to confess that in 
this trying moment Tom vowed with- 
in him never to marry an hysterical 
woman. 

“He needs us all,” he persisted. 
“We must do our best for him. Burt 
Hadley is with him — ” 

“I’m sure the Hadleys are among the 
finest people in the city,” Mrs. Floyd 
chokingly asserted. “Burt has been a 
little wild, perhaps — ” 

“Can you not let me know where 
Gerald lives, Aunt L,ucinda? I am sure 
he is in danger, and I should like to be 
able to go to him at any moment.” 

“I promised not to tell his father. 

169 


THE YOUNG MAN 


His father is very determined, and he... 
does not understand the dear boy at all. 
But perhaps it will do no harm for you 
to know. Here is the address.” 

Tom took the card she gave him. 
The address indicated that Gerald was 
staying at a hotel near the office where 
he worked. Tom knew the place well. 
It was by no means a cheap one, but, 
perhaps, it was too much to expect that 
Gerald, with his luxurious tastes, should 
adapt his expenses to his income. 

Tom knew it would be useless to try 
to reach Gerald as long as he was in 
Burt Hadley’s company. Nora was out 
at a meeting of her class, and there was 
no one to whom he could go for counsel.. 
So he waited. 

The next morning he went to the 
hotel, and found his cousin in his room 
asleep. He wakened him, but could 
get no satisfaction. It was quite evident 
that Gerald had been drinking heavily 
the night before, and that, he was still 
under the influence of liquor. Tom was 
heartsick at the sight. It seemed to 

170 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


him that he would give life itself to see 
Gerald a man among men. 

The day was a busy one, and he went 
home later than usual. The evening 
was already settling down as he started 
out again, but he was restless, and felt 
that he must find Gerald before he slept. 

Gerald had left the hotel, but he fol- 
lowed him to the newspaper office. It 
was not the first time he had been here, 
and the night editor recognized him at 
once. 

“Gone to his assignment,” — that dig- 
nitary condescended to say to Gerald — 
“Meeting of the Liberal Club in Hooli- 
gan’s Hall. Back again at eleven — pos- 
sibly not till midnight.” 

Tom hurried out, glad to escape from 
the stuffy room, with its odor of tobacco 
and whisky. He remembered what Ger- 
ald had once said about this “hole.” 
How could his fastidious cousin endure 
the place? He was not fastidious him- 
self, but he felt sure that this would be 
more than he could bear. 

He had not, at first, any definite in- 

• 171 


THE YOUNG MAN 


tention of going to Hooligan’s Hall. 
The “Liberal Club” was notorious in the 
city — a socialistic organization closely 
watched by the police, and much courted 
by the politicians. Every now and then 
there was an outbreak among its mem- 
bers, and a meeting closed with three or 
four arrests. Still, it did not occur to 
Tom that the place was an especially 
unsafe one for Gerald in his present con- 
dition, until he passed the building. 
Then, hearing excited voices, he turned 
back, climbed the rickety stairs and 
entered the hall. 

To this day he grows sick and faint 
with the memory of that scene. The 
room was nearly filled with excited 
men, representing a dozen nationalities. 
Some were drinking, some were smok- 
ing, many were talking and gesticulat- 
ing wildly. There was a small plat- 
form at one end of the room, and on 
this platform stood Gerald, making a 
speech. 

Even though he saw all this, Tom 
did not for a moment take in the situa- 

172 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


tion. Then, as he noted the untidy 
dress and the disordered hair, and 
caught half a dozen disjointed sen- 
tences, he realized the horror of it all. 
Gerald was drunk. 

“Down wi’ the kid,” someone shout- 
ed: “He’s dhrunk, the foolj Doesn’t 
he know betther than insult dacint peo- 
ple wi’ his fool spachemakin’?” 

“Take off histoggins,” cried another. 
“What for does he come around us poor 
workin’-men wi’ his di’mon’s an’ gold 
watch-chain? Down wi’ him!” 

“Shut up, youngster,” said a stalwart 
fellow who seemed to be the president of 
the club. He addressed his remarks 
directly to Gerald, and seemed to be 
under the impression that he was sooth- 
ing the excited orator. “You’re off, 
don’t you know. Shut up, now, an’ 
get out of this as quick and quiet as you 
can, if you don’t want the boys to get 
after you.” 

“Have I no liberty?” declared Ger- 
ald, with extended arms. “Am I not — 
free man and brother? Am I not — 

173 


THE YOUNG MAN 


’Mexican citizen? Ain I not — under 
glorious — Stars and Stripes? Hail Col- 
umbia! Hail Columbia, I say!” 

“All right,” agreed the president. 
“You get right out. You’re drunk, you 
know. You better not say another 
word.” 

“Will, too,” Gerald retorted. “Free 
country, I say. Free man and brother. 
Say what I please. Came here to say 
what I please, I tell you.” 

“Haul him down!” “Put him out!” 
came from all sides. But Tom had 
reached the platform. 

“Come with me, Gerald,” he said, 
firmly. 

“Won’t. Who says come along? 
Tommy boy, Tommy boy, you’re a fool. 
All fools. World’s full of ’em.” 

The president of the club had come to 
Tom’s assistance, and between them 
they dragged him from the room. The 
delighted club-members followed, and 
enlivened their progress with a variety 
of comments. But Tom was prepared 
for them. At his first recognition of 

174 


FROM MI DDL E FIELD 


the situation he had dispatched a man 
for a carriage. 

They had but a moment to wait. 
The limp figure was pushed inside, and 
was taken to the hotel. 

He seemed to have passed the excited 
stage, and sank i>ack upon the cushions 
without a word. At the hotel he made 
no resistance, but allowed Tom to take 
him to his room and put him into bed. 

As soon as Gerald was thus disposed 
of, Tom went to the telephone, and 
asked his uncle to come to the hotel at 


once. 


175 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XVIII. 



PETER FLOYD HUMBLED. 

|OM had sent for his uncle in des- 
peration rathqr than in hope. 
He was literally at the end of 
his resources. He had tried all the ex- 
pedients he could think of, and could see 
no good results. He felt that his uncle 
should know the worst and share the re- 
sponsibility. 

He was quite prepared for anything. 
His uncle would probably condemn him, 
and advise him to let other people’s 
business alone. But Tom felt that he 
could not be a party to a concealment 
from which nothing good could come. 

His uncle came almost immediately. 
Tom had asked that he be sent at once 
to Gerald’s room. His cousin was quite 
unconscious now, and Tom could not 
risk a scene in the corridor. There was 
no guessing what Peter Floyd would 

176 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


say when his son’s condition became 
fully known to him. 

To-night, however, he did not lose 
his temper. He seemed to comprehend 
the situation at the first glance, and he 
sank down into a chair as if crushed. 
For the first time in his life Tom felt the 
inconvenience of being a man. If he 
were a woman, he thought, he would 
have known some tender trick of com- 
fort, reserved for such an hour as this. 
There would be some delicate way by 
which he could tell his sympathy, other 
than to say bluntly, “I am sorry for 
you.” 

But he was not a woman. Besides, 
he was sufficiently just to know that his 
uncle, in a measure, deserved his sorrow, 
and might possibly profit by it. 

But he was not prepared to see that 
shrewd old face hide itself, as it did 
presently, behind two half-clenched 
hands, or to hear the piteous cry that 
came from his uncle’s lips. 

“God have mercy on me!” he groaned. 
“God have mercy on me!” 

12 177 


THE YOUNG MAN 


He had not himself shown mercy 
many times in all the years of his long 
and busy life, yet mercy was his only 
hope. If our God were a God of justice 
only, there would be few indeed to claim 
his love and care. 

“I’ve been a fool, Tom,” his uncle 
said, presently, raising his head. “I’ve 
tried to put off my burden, but it comes 
back — it comes back.” 

“It seemed best to send for you,” 
Tom said, taking refuge on the practical 
side of the situation. “I didn’t know 
what else to do.” 

Peter Floyd nodded, as if compre- 
hending. “Where was he?” he asked. 

Tom told the story as clearly as he 
could, omitting some humiliating partic- 
ulars which did not seem essential to his 
uncle’s understanding of the case. 
There was silence for a moment. Then 
the older man broke out suddenly: 

“Tom, I’d give every dollar I’ve got 
in the world if Gerald were like you.” 

“He couldn’t be made like me, Uncle 
Peter, and in some ways it would be a 

178 


FROM MI DDL E FI ELD 


great pity if he could. He has very 
marked gifts, you know, and I have 
none at all.” 

“Gifts! Pooh! I’m tired of hearing 
about his gifts. I wish he had a little 
sense and a little conscience. That’s 
what I wish. But he is as he is, and I 
suppose some of the blame is mine.” 

There was another long silence. Then 
there came a confession which gave Tom 
the shock of a great surprise. 

“I haven’t lived as I ought, in some 
respects, Tom. I haven’t been altogeth- 
er a good father. I’ve thought too much 
of getting along in the world and mak- 
ing a success of my business and all 
that. I’m not ashamed of the way I’ve 
succeeded. I’m not ashamed to have 
any man know how my money came, 
for there isn’t a dishonorable dollar in 
the whole pile. But there are some 
things I have left out, and it would have 
been better for Gerald if I had put them 
in. I’ve blamed his mother for his 
faults, but some of the blame is mine, 
too. I haven’t been very patient with 

179 


THE YOUNG MAN 


him. I haven’t always set the right 
things up before him. I wanted him to 
go my way, and I couldn’t be satisfied 
that he wouldn’t. I wanted a chance 
when I was a boy, and it seemed to me 
that a boy who had that sort of chance 
might make something out of it. But 
I’m over all that now. I’m over asking 
ever to be proud of him, or anything of 
that sort. Tom, I believe I’d be willing 
to see that boy a respectable hod-carrier, 
or — or piano-player. ’ ’ 

These last words were spoken with 
such evident distaste that Tom smiled in 
spite of himself. His uncle had been 
humbled indeed. 

“Stay with him,” his uncle went on, 
“Stay with him all night, and as much 
longer as you need to. I’ll give you a 
day’s vacation and fix matters all right 
with Kieffer. Don’t let him be seen if 
you can help it. And when he is him- 
self, bring him home.” 

Tom’s heart leaped for joy at these 
last words. He had little hope now of 

saving Gerald, but surely home was the 
180 


FROM MIDDLEFIEL D 


safest place for one so weak and so easily 
misled. 

His uncle went away abruptly, and 
Tom sat for a long time before the win- 
dow, looking down into the brightly- 
lighted street, with its crowd of careless 
loungers — the evening procession of a 
gay city. 

How life had changed for him in 
these last few months! Only a little 
while ago he had felt like a stranger 
and an alien in this great city. Now, 
the burden of other lives was almost 
greater than he could bear, and he real- 
ized that he was a part of all he felt and 
saw. And the realization made him 
both glad and anxious. 

He had no idea of sleeping. He could 
not lie down beside Gerald, — Gerald 
who slept the disgraceful sleep of the 
drunkard! And of course he could not 
leave him. He must wait and watch 
until the morning. 

But he was a sturdy young fellow, 
wearied with a hard day’s work. He 
thought, then he mused, then he dozed. 

181 


THE YOUNG MAN 


It was broad daylight when he awoke. 
Gerald was sitting up in bed, haggard 
and bewildered. 

“Tommy boy!” he said, faintly. 
“You, Tommy boy!” 

“Yes, I’m here, Gerald.” 

“Drunk!” cried Gerald, with sudden 
recollection. “Crazy drunk, wasn’t I?” 

“Yes.” 

“Made a fool of myself at Hooli- 
gan’s?” 

“Yes.” 

Tom was not at all inclined to soften 
matters down. 

“Was it you who got me out?” 

“Yes.” 

“Don’t sit there and say ‘yes’ to every- 
thing. It’s enough to drive a fellow 
mad. Say I’m clean gone this time, 
and you know it. Say I might better 
be dead and done with it. I told you 
that a long time ago. I hope you know 
it now.” 

“I don’t know anything of the kind,” 
said Tom, pugnaciously. Somehow, 
Gerald never irritated him quite so much 
182 


FROM MI DDLEFIELD 


at any other time as when he took this 
willfully despairing tone. “You ought 
to be glad to be alive, and to make other 
people glad, too. It’s a shame and dis- 
grace that you don’t.” 

“I don’t think you’re very glad,” 
growled Gerald. 

“We’re going home together after a 
little,” Tom told him, thinking it time 
to change the subject. “Your father 
has been here, and he wants you to go 
home.” 

“Go home! Does he think I’ll sneak 
home, after being sent away? I haven’t 
much independence left, but I hope I 
have too much for that. No, sir! Not 
one step of the way home will I go. 
I’ve managed to get along so far with- 
out any help from father, and if I need 
to starve I can do that. But no going 
home for me.” 

He was at the stubborn stage, but be- 
hind the stubbornness of his present 
condition there was the resentment of a 
proud nature, long indulged in all the 
caprices of its pride. Tom’s only hope 


THE YOUNG MAN 


was to take him now, while he was 
humbled, but just now he would not be 
taken. 

Tom went downstairs and ordered 
breakfast for two. Then he went to the 
telephone and called up Nora. 

“Bring Dolph and the carriage, and 
come at once,” he said. “Tell your 
father that you are coming, but don’t 
tell anybody else. I will wait here for 
you.” 


184 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER XIX. 



MR. FRO YD QUARRERS WITH KIEFFER. 

HE promptness with which Nora 
took command of the situation 
immediately upon her arrival at 
the hotel left Tom opportunity for noth- 
ing but to indulge his surprise at her 
energy. 

“I shall pretend to myself that he is 
ill,” she whispered to Tom, as he met 
her in the hall and told her why he had 
sent for her. “That will make it easy 
for me to be good to him, and, besides, 
sick people are the only ones I know 
how to get on with. He really is a little 
ill, isn’t he?” 

“Indeed he is. He looked quite mis- 
erable enough to be under a doctor’s 
care, even before this.” 

“I’ve come to bring you home,” she 
announced, sweeping down upon her 
brother with irresistible determination. 
“The idea of your staying in this horri- 

185 



THE YOUNG MAN 


ble old hotel, with enough disease-germs 
in the wall-paper to give you a dozen 
different kinds of fever!” 

“I’m not going home,” muttered Ger- 
ald. “Tom needn’t play that kind of 
trick on me. Or was it father who told 
you to come?” 

“It was both of them. But I should 
have found out you were ill, and have 
come any way, before long. And you 
must go, you know. Dolph is here with 
the carriage.” 

“You are ashamed of me,” said Ger- 
ald. “You know you are.” 

“Yes, I suppose I am,” agreed the 
painfully truthful girl. “But I want 
you, just the same. I’m not much ac- 
count among well people, but I truly da 
have a talent for sick ones. Come, now, 
let Tom and Dolph help you to bundle 
into the carriage as soon as ever you 
can.” 

His will, always weak, was surprised 
and overmastered by her determined 
tone. He had never appreciated Nora, 

but to-day her resolution and decision. 

186 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


wrung from him a kind of tardy admira- 
tion. 

He did not say that he would go 
home, but he allowed Tom and Nora to 
bundle him up — a proceeding upon 
which his sister insisted, perhaps for the 
sake of keeping his invalidism upper- 
most in her own mind. 

“Have you forgotten that it is the 
first of June?” he asked, as he pulled up 
his coat collar. 

“The air is raw this morning,” she 
said. Her face was close to his, and he 
was surprised to see a tear on her lashes. 
He was breaking her heart, in spite of 
her spirit and independence. 

There was no special scene over Ger- 
ald’s home-coming. His mother was out 
shopping, and his father had wisely be- 
taken himself to the office. Peter Floyd 
knew well enough that he was not likely 
to carry himself admirably under such 
circumstances, and that a quarrel just 
now between himself and Gerald would 
be fatal. 

Gerald threw himself down upon the 

187 


THE YOUNG MAN 


luxurious couch in his own room with 
the air of one whose power of resistance 
is at an end. He was not at all repent- 
ant, but he was very much more com- 
fortable here than elsewhere. 

It was nearly night when Tom ap- 
peared at his uncle’s office. Fortunately, 
he found the head of the house alone. 

“Did you take him home?” was the 
anxious query with which he was 
greeted. No need to ask whether Peter 
Floyd still loved and yearned over his 
wayward son. The quaver of eagerness 
in his voice told the story. 

“Yes. He is very weak — quite shat- 
tered, it seems to me, but otherwise he 
is himself.” 

“I hope he is ashamed of himself.” 

Tom sighed. He would have been 
glad to indulge such a hope on his own 
part, but he could not. But, perhaps, 
in his way, Gerald was ashamed. There 
are different kinds of shame; for in- 
stance, the shame of repentance and the 
shame of humiliation. 

“I trust,” said Tom, hesitating, yet 

188 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


determined to speak out, “I trust he 
will not go back to the newspaper 
office. ” 

“What office is that?” 

“He has been reporting for The Peo- 
ple. I supposed you knew.” 

“Knew! I should think not! Did you 
suppose I would allow a son of mine to 
be connected with that scurrilous sheet? 
I would not touch it w r ith the toe of my 
shoe. I wouldn’t condescend to light a 
fire with it. Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Tom was perplexed and weary, and 
could only repeat that he supposed his 
uncle knew. 

“Knew! How should I know?' I 
know nothing except what you tell me. 
Gerald has not spoken to me for months, 
and his mother” — 

He stopped short. Tom felt that he 
had lost a great part of the ground 
gained the night before, but a bold 
course seemed the only safe one to pur- 
sue, so he gathered courage to say: 

“You agree with me, then, that he 
should leave the paper?” 

189 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“L,eave the paper? Of course he must 
leave it. I shall turn him out of doors 
if he doesn’t leave it. You may tell him 
I said so — that is, if you think best,” he 
added, hastily. Of this addition Tom 
took note promptly. “I should never 
have brought him home if I had known 
this,” he added. 

In this last assertion he was quite mis- 
taken, being one of the many men who 
mistake their moods for their convic- 
tions. 

4 ‘I tell you, Tom,” he went on, pres- 
ently, “I don’t know what is to become 
of him. I don’t,- indeed. It’s a bitter 
pill, and I suppose there’s nothing in 
the world to do but to swallow it.” 

Tom saw that nothing could be gained 
by further conversation, and he went 
away. It was nearly time to quit work, 
but he went and reported himself to 
Kieffer, who was out of sorts and not in- 
clined to excuse his absence. 

“I thought my uncle explained,” 
Tom said. 

“So he did. But when you want 

190 


FROM MI DDL E FI EL D 


leave you ought to speak to me. This 
is my job, here in this yard, and your 
uncle has said, over and over, that you 
were to be treated like any other em- 
ployee. ” 

Peter Floyd came up in time to hear 
these last words. “Do you mean to in- 
timate,” he thundered, “that I can’t 
give any man about this establishment 
leave whenever I’m disposed? Do you 
mean to intimate that this isn’t my es- 
tablishment, and that I haven’t a right 
to run it to please myself?” 

“Certainly I didn’t mean that,” said 
Kieffer, in a voice which was meant to 
be apologetic, but which had a slight 
undertone of sulkiness. “But you have 
said that Mr. Tom wasn’t to take liber- 
ties.” 

“ Take liberties! That is another mat- 
ter altogether. The question is whether 
or not I have a right to give liberties in 
my own establishment. I wish you to 
understand, Mr. Kieffer, that I don’t 
take dictation from my employees.” 

“Excuse me, uncle,” said Tom. 

191 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“ Perhaps I should explain that I didn’t 
know it would be necessary for me to be 
absent, and so had no chance to tell Mr. 
Kieffer beforehand.” 

“ Explain!” Peter Floyd repeated the 
word as if he were firing it back to his 
nephew from the mouth of a cannon. “I 
desire no explanation made of my con- 
duct.” 

Kieffer was of the slow, sullen sort, 
and his anger was steadily rising. “If I 
don’t suit you,” he added, “maybe 
you’d better get a man that does.” 

“Maybe I had,” agreed Mr. Floyd. 
He was plainly startled by the sugges- 
tion, but he was not the man to back 
down from any position. 

“Very well, Mr. Floyd. This isn’t 
the first time I’ve been found fault with, 
but it will be the last time here. There 
is plenty of work ready for me in other 
places, and you may consider my place 
vacant.” And Kieffer walked away 
without another word. 

Mr. Floyd looked after him in ill-con- 
cealed annoyance. “I didn’t suppose 


192 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


he’d take me so seriously,” lie said. 
“He’s a ratlier surly fellow, but he 
knows his business, and I don’t know 
how I shall get along without him. But 
I’ve never yet eaten humble pie before 
an employee, and I never will. See 
here, Tom” — a thought seemed to strike 
him — “you’re a great fellow to meddle 
with what don’t belong to you, and I 
suppose you must have found out a great 
deal about the business by this time. 
Can you run things here until I get a 
new superintendent?” 

“Can I?” said Tom, in such surprise 
that a more sensible question was quite 
impossible to him. 

“That’s what I asked you” returned 
his uncle, snappily. “Kieffer was al- 
ways complaining that you bothered 
yourself with other people’s work in ad- 
dition to your own. Very well; we’ll 
have a chance now to find out how much 
good it has done you. It won’t be for 
long, and I’ll help you out. If you get 
into a corner, don’t ask questions of the 
men. Come to me. You’d better be 

193 


13 


THE YOUNG MAN 


ready to take charge to-morrow morn- 
ing, for I think Kieffer is too mad to 
come back and finish out his week. I’d 
have hopes of his repenting, only that 
sort of a fellow rages worse the longer 
he thinks of a thing. So you’d better 
be ready.” 

Tom went away with many strong 
feelings warring within him. He felt 
that Kieffer had been unkindly treated, 
and he was, in a sense, the cause of this. 
His uncle was unjust, and he did not 
like to profit by his injustice. 

On the other hand, Tom, like every 
stirring, ambitious boy, had always 
dreamed of his “chance.” His chance 
had come, and he wondered what he 
would do with it. 

m 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER XX. 



TOM IN KIEFFER’ S PEACE. 

jJOM had not been in his new posi- 
tion long before he found that 
it was very much more difficult 
than he had supposed. The men sym- 
pathized entirely with Kieffer, and laid 
the blame of his departure upon Tom. 
To them, it was quite plain that Mr. 
Floyd had picked a quarrel with his 
superintendent merely for the sake of 
giving the place to his nephew. The 
head of the house had not taken the 
trouble to explain that Tom was in 
authority only temporarily. He had 
simply told them that they were to 
report to his new officer, the youngest 
man in the yard and one who had come 
into the place later than all but two or 
three. What explanation could there 
be, save that this was planned from the 
beginning, and that Kieffer had been 
pushed out of the way to make room for 

195 


THE YOUNG MAN 


one whom their employer naturally felt 
inclined to favor? 

This feeling on the part of the men 
was natural enough, and Tom could 
have borne with it well enough, per- 
haps, if he had understood it. But he 
heard only now and then a suspicious 
whisper, and knew that the men were 
antagonistic to him without knowing 
the reason why. He was therefore in 
the uncomfortable position of a doctor 
who seeks to cure a disease without hav- 
ing an idea of its cause. 

“The men are dissatisfied,” he told 
Nora, who was his special confidante 
nowadays. “I can’t find out where the 
trouble is, but I suppose they think I’m 
an interloper.” 

“Of course they do,” agreed Nora, 
heartily. “They think that you’re offi- 
cious, and that you’re running things 
because you’re papa’s nephew. But it 
isn’t worth while to mind them. Noth- 
ing is worth minding if you are doing 
what you know is right, and are keep- 
ing faith with your own conscience.” 

196 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


Her spirited face glowed as she spoke. 
What a noble-looking creature Nora was 
growing into! It was only nine months 
since he had come here, and had shud- 
dered at her bitterness and her dissatis- 
faction with the world. 

How wonderfully had she fallen into 
harmony with life and its duties in these 
short months! 

“I wish you would keep me reminded 
of that,” Tom said. “I try to remem- 
ber, but somehow my desire to straighten 
out the world does get the better of my 
patience.” 

“Yes,” said Nora, musingly, “that’s 
your worst fault — and your finest virtue. 
I suppose people's faults and virtues are 
likely to get mixed up, when they are as 
close together as yours are. You are 
willing to take endless trouble for peo- 
ple, and to do any number of things for 
them, but you haven’t much idea that 
anything will be done unless you do it. 
You are even a little in doubt as to 
whether the stars would keep to their 
proper courses, if you shouldn’t lie 

197 


THE YOUNG MAN 


awake at night to attend to them. And 
yet, Tom, I have a notion that the world 
would go very badly if there were not a 
few like you.” 

These last words, and the smile that 
accompanied them, took all the sting 
out of those that had gone before, and 
Tom tried to put away the worry and to 
live in the hope of a clearer understand- 
ing of the situation. 

Nora had taken full possession of Ger- 
ald. The last days of her college life 
were busy ones, yet she gave him a sur- 
prising share of her time. He avoided 
his father as far as possible, and espe- 
cially disliked to take his meals with the 
family. So Nora carried them up to 
him, on the pretext that he was still an 
invalid. She could not help showing 
her consciousness of his wrongdoing, 
but on the whole she was very kind. 

“Tom,” she said, wistfully, one Sat- 
urday evening when he had come in late 
and very tired, “I want to talk to you 
just a minute.” 

He stopped, leaning upon the stair- 

198 


FROM MI DDLEFIELD 


case, but, seeing the earnestness in her 
face, he followed her into the library. 

“Commencement day will come next 
week, you know,” she said. The shy 
sweetness in her manner was new and 
charming. 

“Indeed I haven’t forgotten that,’’ 
Tom said, wondering that she should 
choose this way to tell him what he had 
known for months. “That will be a 
great day for all of us.” 

“I ought to have made a better show- 
ing at school. I’m ashamed of myself, 
but you know I never tried until the last 
few months. Since then I have been 
second, though that isn’t much to say.” 

“You are going to be first all the way 
through the Medical College.” 

“Perhaps not,” answered Nora, very 
seriously, “I’m going to try, though. 
You see, I’m just finding out how much 
good there is in trying.” 

“There’s no doubt that most of the 
good we get comes in that way,” an- 
swered Tom, wondering whither all this 
self-accusatory talk was to lead. 

199 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“I suppose it’s a rather fanciful no- 
tion,” she began again, “but I’ve been 
thinking that I’d like to have another 
kind of Commencement Day before 
Thursday. If I can — indeed, if I live — 
I want to join the church to-morrow.” 

“Nora!” Tom’s hands joined hers in 
such another boyish clasp as that with 
which they had once entered into com- 
pact, long ago. “It’s too good — just 
too good to be believed! I can’t take it 
in. O Nora, I am so glad!” 

Nora was deeply touched “I did- 
n’t know but you’d remember all the 
hateful things I said about the church, 
when you first came,” she said. “I did 
like to be hateful then, I think. But it 
is different now. Fife is too complicated 
for me to try to make it out. First it 
was you who showed me how to get 
help, and then it was you and Marjorie, 
and now it is all the people I know who 
are trying to live for something outside 
of self. I can see now that is the only 
way.” There was a wistful sweetness 
in her voice. 


200 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


“I told mother this morning,’ ’ she 
continued, with an odd little smile. 
“She is herself a member of Trinity 
Church, you know, but she said there 
was no denying that some of the finest 
people in the city attended Dr. Cush- 
ing’s. As for my joining any church, 
she didn’t know as it made any differ- 
ence, as I had practically given up 
society, anyhow. I wish she could be 
a little bit glad, but maybe she doesn’t 
know how. I haven’t been a very duti- 
ful daughter, Tom, though I have really 
been trying, iately, to do better.” 

“I know you have,” agreed Tom. 

“Mamma and I haven’t understood 
each other. I’m not elegant, and cor- 
rect socially, and I haven’t pleased her 
in little things, as well as I might. 
I can see clearly enough now that those 
things mamma likes and has tried to 
teach me to like are not to be despised. 
They’re real things, although they’re 
not the greatest things. It isn’t nice to 
be rude, and careless of people’s feel- 
ings, as I have often seemed to be. I’ve 
201 


THE YOUNG MAN 


deserved mamma’s disapproval, and I’m 
sure I’ve had it. It will take a great 
deal of patience to get back the ground 
I’ve lost, and patience always comes 
hard with me. But if you see me for- 
getting to try, I want you to pay me 
back in some of my own coin of free 
speech, and remind me of my duty.” 

“I’ll be quite sure to do that. For 
you know I meddle with other people’s 
business — ” 

“This won’t be other people’s busi- 
ness. I intend to make it your own, 
from this time on. But, Tom, I’ve just 
told papa what I mean to do to-morrow. 
And what do you think he said? Papa 
and I have been friends always, you 
know. He scolds me a great deal, but I 
always understand. I suppose it is be- 
cause we are so much alike. I get my 
temper and my energy from him, and he 
knows how to make allowances for both. 
Well, when I told papa I meant to join 
the church, he kissed me, and tousled 
my hair all over, and couldn’t think of 
any words for a minute. Then he said, 
202 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


‘That’s right, daughter, that’s exactly 
right. It’s heathenish for a woman not 
to have a faith and live up to it. Men 
have their own way of living, but I want 
my daughter to be religious.’ ” 

“I think he is mistaken about the 
difference between men and women.” 

“Of course he is. I have been very 
unhappy about papa ever since I began 
to go to Endeavor, and to think about 
these things for myself. He goes off to 
the office every Sunday, and seems to 
have no enjoyment in the day except 
to go on with the business of the week. 
He is such a dear old father, in spite of 
his storminess and stubbornness, and I 
do wish he knew how to be happy.” 

“Perhaps he will learn,” suggested 
Tom, who was himself so happy to- 
night that all difficult things looked 
easy. 

Nora shook her head. “Eife doesn’t 
tend that way,” she said. “I’m not 
twenty yet, and I find I have habits that 
hold me like shackles. How must it be 
at fifty, do you think?” 

. 203 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XXI. 


TOM MAKES A FRIEND. 



ora had the fulfillment of her 
wish, and her two “commence- 
ment days” were full of hap- 


piness. 

“There is to be a dancing party for 
the graduates,” she told Tom, “but I 
can be counted out of that. You know 
what I said about ‘department store 
Christians.’ It won’t do for me to be 
one of that kind.” 

This was an anxious week for Tom. 
The men were in a state of inward re- 
bellion, and he knew it, but he could 
not lay his finger upon the cause, much 
less find the remedy. It seemed to him 
that he had never found it quite so hard 
to put Christ first. A sense of the in- 
justice of his position burned within 
him, and he found it hard to keep from 
using his power unwisely and dealing 
unjustly in return. His uncle held him 

204 



FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


to a strict account, but seemed to have 
quite forgotten bis promise of bis belp. 

“Don’t truckle to tbe men,” be said 
once. “There must be a bead here, and 
for a week or two you are to be that 
bead. Let ’em understand it.” 

But this was a finer trick in the say- 
ing than in tbe doing. Tom was only 
a boy, and bad not a commanding man- 
ner. The men regarded him, not as 
their natural bead, but as bis uncle’s 
nephew. 

Sam Larkin was late one morning. 
Tom looked up inquiringly as be came 
in. 

“Baby sick,” growled Sam. “Wife 
worn out waiting on him. Sat up all 
night. Couldn’t get here any earlier.” 

“You shouldn’t have come at all,” 
said Tom, to whom kindness to those in 
sickness or trouble was as instinctive as 
breathing. “Go right back home and 
get some sleep.” 

Sam paused irresolutely. 

“I’ll explain to my uncle,” Tom told 
him. 


205 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“Thought them two big orders had to 
be got out to-day, ” Sam muttered, wish- 
ing it were easier to hate this good- 
natured youngster who had been put 
over him. 

“So they have,” agreed Tom. “But 
I’ll do my part toward getting them out, 
and I am sure the others will. See here, 
boys!” he spoke excitedly and, uncon- 
sciously to himself, with a freedom from 
restraint which was unusual. He had 
quite forgotten himself. “Sam’s baby 
is sick, and he got no sleep last night. 
He ought to be at home to get a rest and 
be prepared for another turn at nursing. 
Who will put in an extra hour, if it is 
needed, so we can get the orders off 
without him? I will, for one.” 

“I will, for one!” 

“I will!” 

“I will!” 

There was no lack of help. 

“I’m sorry -you need to go, Sam,” 
Tom told the astonished employee, “but 
you see we shall get on famously with- 
out you. So it’s all right.” 

206 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


Sam walked out slowly, and without a 
word. Tom was a good-natured young- 
ster, there was no denying it. Maybe 
it was only a trick to get on the right 
side of the men, but it didn’t seem just 
like that. There was a ring in his voice 
that sounded friendly and interested, “as 
if he really s’posed we rough fellows 
care whether our babies live or die,” 
was Sam’s characteristic comment. 

Sam was needed at home that day. 
When Tom came in the evening to in- 
quire about the baby, he found a bit of 
white crape on the door. He thought 
of Baby Walter, and tears came to his 
eyes. Sam, when he opened the door, 
was surprised to see Tom there. 

“He was an awful knowin’ little feller 
for his age,” Sam told him; “so kind of 
old like, as if he was thinkin’ more’n 
he’d ever learnt how to say. An’ his 
ma, he was the only one, you see, an’ it 
seemed as if she couldn’t let go of him.” 
Sam had always been considered the 
most uncommunicative man about the 

207 


THE YOUNG MAN 


yard, but grief bad loosened bis tongue, 
and be poured out bis heart. 

“I can’t make things seem right with- 
out the little chap,” be insisted. 
“When he come to stay with us, he 
kind of set the pace for everything. 
We’d always been in the habit of 
spendin’ what we earnt, but we begun 
to put a few dollars by now and then, 
thinkin’ we must give him clothes an’ 
schoolin’ an’ a little start in the world. 
I never was a bad smoker, but after the 
little chap come, Jennie — that’s my 
wife — would say, whenever I lit my 
pipe, ‘Sam, baby’ll want his pipe, one 
of these days, if you have yours,’ and 
then she’d coax so good-natured and 
laughin’ like, that I as good as give up 
smokin’ altogether, for the baby’s sake. 
Yes, Mister Tom, he’d come to set the 
pace for everything we said an’ did, an’ 
I can’t make things seem right without 
him.” 

Tom wished, as he had often wished 
before, that he was gifted in speech and 

could give words of comfort. Perhaps 
208 






FROM MIDDLEFIELD 

it was fortunate that he had no such 
gift, for he was spared the knowledge 
of what poor things the best chosen 
words may be. 

“Come an’ take a look at him, won’t 
you?” Sam pleaded, and led the way to 
the tiny form, still lying in its little 
crib. 

The baby looked so like Walter that 
Tom started at the first view of the ex- 
quisite little face. “I almost thought 
it must be my baby brother, ” he said, as 
he reverently passed his hand over the 
soft, fair curls. “Walter is just the same 
age, you. see, and the forehead and hair 
are so wonderfully alike.” 

The words seemed to establish a kin- 
ship between the two men. Henceforth, 
to Sam, Tom was not his uncle’s 
nephew, but the brother of a baby boy 
who looked like his own. 

“I always thought Mister Tom was 
good-natured,” he told his wife that 
night. Hitherto he had always spoken 
of the new head of the department as 
“the youngster,” or as “that kid of a 

209 


THE YOUNG MAN 


boss.” “He’s got a meddlesome sort of 
a way with him, but after all it ain’t 
him that I object to. It’s bis bein’ put 
where he don’t belong. Mister Tom is 
all right, an’ I never said he wasn’t.” 

“And he said Baby looked like his 
little brother?” his wife asked, chok- 
ingly. Her husband had already re- 
peated Tom’s words to her three times, 
but they were music to her and she 
wished to hear them again. 

“ ‘Just the same age,’ was what he 
said, ‘an’ the forehead an’ hair wonder- 
ful alike.’ ” 

And the bruised and grief-stricken 
mother of the dead child laid up the 
words in her heart. 

The next day Tom came back to offer 
his help in arranging for the funeial. 
“The men are all coming,” he said. 
“My uncle has given them the time.” 

The abrupt pause in his sentence was 
due to Tom’s sudden recollection of his 
uncle’s reluctance to grant the favor. 

“This establishment can’t be shut 
down every time somebody’s sixteenth 
210 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


cousin dies,” lie had said. “Didn’t I 
tell you not to truckle to the men? 
They are a discontented lot, and the 
more you give ’em the more they’ll ask 
for. They’ll take all the favors you’ll 
give them, and then they’ll despise you 
for granting ’em.” 

“But this isn’t a sixteenth cousin — 
it’s Sam’s own little boy,” Tom remind- 
ed him. 

“Yes, yes, I know, and I suppose the 
men’ll have to go to the funeral, for all 
of me. I’ve given you the management 
of things in there, for the present, and 
you’ll have to run ’em your way.’,’ 

Thus ungraciously was the permission 
given. But Sam was grateful, and felt 
that the sight of his comrades would 
help him to bear his sorrow when the 
hardest hour should come. 

“Can I do anything?” Tom asked; 
“see a minister, or anything of that 
sort?” 

Sam was silent for a moment, partly 

through embarrassment, and partly 
211 


THE YOUNG MAN 


through a sense of the importance of 
what he was about to say. 

“Mister Tom,” he began at length, 
“Jennie and I ain’t infidels. We’ve 
got our little Bible, an’ she reads it reg- 
ular; an’ sometimes she gets me set 
down to it of a Sunday afternoon when 
it was still-like, an’ I hain’t nothin’ 
else to do. Jennie was fetched up to go 
to Sunday-school, but I wasn’t fetched 
up to nothin’, and sence we was married 
we hain’t been church folks of no kind. 
We’ve often talked about it, an’ said it 
wasn’t the right way to bring up the 
little chap, but talk is talk an’ habits is 
habits. Now, it would seem natural to 
have no preacher, for we don’t know 
none, but if you’d jest come and read 
out of the little Bible, and maybe say a 
prayer — ’ ’ 

Tom’s eyes grew big with astonish- 
ment. “Why, Sam,” he cried, “how 
could I?” 

Sam’s face fell. “They all said you 
was religious, ” he said, in a disap- 
pointed tone. 


212 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


Tom blushed. “I ought to be ashamed 
of myself,” he said; “I do profess to be 
a Christian, and any Christian should be 
willing to read the Bible and pray 
when he is called upon.” 

Still, he hesitated. The men would 
be there, and the men did not like him. 
But whom had he promised to put first 
in his life? 

“I’ll try, Sam, if you really wish it,” 
he said. 


213 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XXII. 

AFTER THE EUNERAE. 

ERY strange and shy Tom felt, as 
he stood beside the tiny casket, 
with the “little Bible” in his 
hand. But a sympathetic heart does not 
lead one far astray, and his voice was 
full of comfort as he read of the many 
mansions of the Father’s house, of the 
city which has no need of the sun nor 
yet of the moon to lighten it, and of the 
river of the water of life, clear as crystal, 
proceeding out of the throne of God and 
of the Eamb. 

What tells a man’s heart as truly as 
his prayers? He who lives afar from 
God may preach eloquently, but the 
stumbling steps by which he comes to 
the throne of grace will tell of the infre- 
quency of his approaches. Tom was 
neither of the temper nor of the habit 
which makes one what is called “gifted 
in prayer,” when by “gifted” is meant 

214 



FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


fluent and ready. But his simplicity 
and reverence touched all hearts that 
day, as he asked God to “take care of 
the dear little boy in heaven,’’ and help 
the father and mother to bear their sor- 
row and be prepared to meet him. 

“It made me feel as if baby was 
alive ,” Sam’s wife said, as they sat to- 
gether that night in the lonely house. 

“I guess Mister Tom thinks he is,” 
Sam said, awkwardly. He was not used 
to conversing on spiritual themes, and 
new words and phrases did not come to 
him readily. “I never see anybody be- 
fore that seemed to kind of take heaven 
for granted the way he does. It ain’t as 
if he’d ever seen any trouble himself, 
though. Some folks can be awful re- 
signed until the hard part comes their 
own way, and then it ain’t so easy.” 

“I hope he won’t never have to bear 
such a trouble as ours, Sam. He’s got 
an awful loving heart. Do you mind 
the way he spoke about his baby 
brother?” 

Sam had certainly not forgotten. Nor 

215 


THE YOUNG MAN 


could he answer “no” when his wife 
asked him if he had ever seen a man put 
himself out more for them in trouble 
that wasn’t noways related to him than 
Mister Tom had done. He had even 
brought Miss Deane and her friend to 
sing; and, for her part, she could never 
forget how like angels they seemed, and 
how they sang about how we would un- 
derstand all these hard things some day. 

Sam was silent on this point. In 
truth, his gratitude was quite equal to 
his wife’s, and he was wondering how, 
when he should return to work upon the 
morrow, he could bear to hear the men 
speak light of “the youngster.” 

He was not compelled to suffer in this 
way. It was evident that the men had 
sympathized so fully with Sam as to be 
sharers in his gratitude, and Tom was 
treated with a degree of respect which 
surprised him. Once, during the noon 
hour, as Peter Floyd and his nephew 
were observed leaving the office together, 
one of the men observed, “Well, boys, 

I’ve heard a mighty sight about scooping 
216 


FROM MI DDL E FI EL D 


blood out of a turnip, but that’s the first 
chap ever I see that would really do it. 
Mister Tom is only a youngster, and he 
don’t know business, and it was no fair 
to turn Kieffer out to make room for 
him; but I’ve been treated the whitest 
by the old gentleman for the last fort- 
night that I’ve been in all the four years 
I've been here. The kid ain’t the equal 
of Kieffer, but he beats all creation man- 
aging his uncle.” 

“That’s so!” agreed another. 

“Mister Tom has been mighty good 
to me,” Sam Larkin ventured to say. 

“That’s so,” agreed the first speaker. 
“And there wasn’t no put-on about it, 
neither. I ain’t particular smart, but I 
hain’t worked here and there, off and 
on, for twenty years, without knowing 
whether a boss is trying to smooth you 
down and get you to like him, or whether 
he senses that you’re flesh and blood, 
and means to treat you accordingly. As 
I say, I ain’t particular smart, but if 
Mister Tom didn’t feel for you folks 

217 


THE YOUNG MAN 


about the little chap” — the speaker 
lapsed into respectful silence. 

“I thought that was an awful good 
prayer he made,” Sam ventured. “It 
seemed like I was right there.” Per- 
haps the poor fellow felt that this vague 
allusion to the next world was quite 
familiar enough for such unaccustomed 
lips as his. This time the silence was 
painful. At last the man who had 
spoken first broke out: 

“Say, boys, I see Kieffer last night.” 

“Did you?” they chorused. “What 
did he say? What is he about?” 

“He’s got a real slick job over at 
Lamb & Doty’s — wages five dollars a 
week better than he had here.” 

“You don’t say!” The tone was not 
enthusiastic. It had been convenient to 
look upon Kieffer as a martyr, and such 
a view would clearly be out of the ques- 
tion in the future. 

“In some ways Kieffer was a good 
boss,” the same speaker went on. “He 
knew his business, and he ’tended to it 

that we knew ours. But he was a bit 

218 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


surly, and the trouble was part his mak- 
ing when he went away. The old gen- 
tleman didn’t treat him white, but he’s 
gone now, and better off, it seems, than 
ever he was. So what do you say, boys, 
to giving the young man a chance?” 

The response was general and hearty. 
Tom was surprised next morning to 
diave his greetings to the men returned, 
and to have them answer “Yes, sir,” 
when directed in their work. 

They were still sensitive over the fact 
that a mere boy, and an inexperienced 
one at that, had been put over them, but 
the personal feeling had for the most 
part died out, and they looked upon 
Tom as a good-natured and inoffensive 
fellow, who was doing his best in a 
place for which he was not fitted. 

Peter Floyd observed all this with not 
a little interest. The work did not al- 
ways go as fast as he could have wished, 
and on this point he expressed himself 
with a truly autocratic freedom both to 
Tom and to the men. But there was 
less friction than there had been before, 

219 


THE YOUNG MAN 


favors were asked as favors, not de- 
manded as rights, and Tom’s good tem- 
per was proving quite as contagious as 
his predecessor’s surliness. 

As the busy season advanced, Tom 
realized that he needed to be on his 
metal to keep up with the orders. He 
often went back at night in order to 
make his calculations and have every- 
thing ready to have the wprk tell next 
morning. Of this extra work his uncle, 
who was himself the most industrious of 
men, highly approved, sometimes re- 
marking to Nora, “There’s some good 
red blood in that fellow — there is, in- 
deed. A trifle impulsive, but he’s got 
good red blood, and he isn’t ashamed of 
hard work.” 

One night, as Tom came down stairs, 
hat in hand, his uncle said, “Wait a 
minute, Tom, I’ll walk along with you, 
if you’re going back to the office.” 

“I’m sorry to miss your company,” 
Tom said, “but I’m not going to the 
office to-night. I’m going to prayer- 
meeting.” 


220 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


His uncle frowned. “The orders are 
piling np pretty fast,” he said. 

“I know; but I don’t like to give up 
prayer-meeting. I’ve worked every night 
this week until now, and I’ve a notion I 
feel better to get the cobwebs out of my 
head and think of something besides 
lumber now and then. I’m sure I work 
with more spirit the rest of the time.” 

“Humph!” grunted Mr. Floyd. It 
was such a perfectly non-committal 
grunt that Tom could not even guess 
whether or not his uncle was offended. 
But he was quite encouraged when the 
latter brought his hat and said that he 
would at least walk as far as the church. 

Mr. Floyd did not stay long at the 
office, and on his return he sought out 
Nora. 

“See here,” he said, “I want to know 
what this means: Tom said he was 
going to prayer-meeting, but when we 
got as far as the Deanes, he politely told 
me good-night, and went in there.” 

“Means!” said Nora, catching him by 

the lapels of the coat, and waltzing him 
221 


THE YOUNG MAN 

about the room, to the peril of the china 
and bric-a-brac, “it means that you are 
quite as blind as a bat and far less im- 
aginative. Tom always goes to prayer- 
meeting by way of the Deanes!’ ’ 

222 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

TOM BECOMES SUPERINTENDENT. 

. Jonathan Edwards Cush- 
had resigned his pastorate, 
wished to go to Europe, he 
said, “to gather materials.” After his 
return he would seek a broader field. 
Perhaps he would spend several years on 
the lecture platform. Ultimately, he 
would write a book. He had in mind, 
even now, a work on “The Esthetics of 
Christianity.” 

The resignation of Doctor Cushing 
caused much surprise among the mem- 
bers of the church, but their chief sur- 
prise was that they were surprised so 
little. For months a new spirit had 
been developing, a spirit which Doctor 
Cushing had scarcely welcomed, much 
less shared. In the beginning, the 
young people had been awakened, and 
had made their influence felt. Gradu- 
ally the new life had extended through 

223 



THE YOUNG MAN 


the church. The prayer-meetings had 
changed their character, and the social 
life of the church had come to be a 
power. 

“The truth is,” Doctor Cushing told 
his wife, “this pulpit no longer demands 
a cultured ministry. The unction of a 
backwoods exhorter is what the people 
think they want. They profess no dis- 
satisfaction with me, but how can I 
spend my life among a people who are 
growing indifferent to Browning, and 
who prefer revivalistic enthusiasm to 
pure oratory? I have noticed a change 
ever since that young man from Middle- 
field took hold of affairs. His inten- 
tions are entirely proper and worthy, 
but he is quite unconscious of his limi- 
tations and so, it would seem, are those 
who push him forward. There are in- 
evitable dangers attendant upon the 
social equality permitted in church cir- 
cles, and I often wonder whether such 
equality is necessary or desirable. At 
the present rate, this church will lose 

her intellectual and social prestige alto- 
224 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


gether, and become a mere Gospel Dis- 
pensary, giving out soul-cures to whom- 
soever may happen along. My idea of 
a church is rather that of a picture-gal- 
lery, where rare souls may linger and 
dream over the good, the beautiful and 
the true.” 

So, evidently in self-defense, Doctor 
Cushing took himself away from a 
church so evidently doomed ; and his 
members saw him no more. 

In his place there came a bright, ener- 
getic man, of simple manners and con- 
vincing speech. The people learned to 
love him for his goodness, and to follow 
him because of the strong personality 
which made him a natural leader. 

Bruce Wynne certainly had no preju- 
dice against the young man from Mid- 
dlefield. He and Tom were friends 
from the beginning, and to no one, not 
even to his mother, had Tom found it so 
easy to open his heart. Once, when 
both were early at prayer-meeting, Mr. 
Wynne reached over and took Toni’s 

15 225 


THE YOUNG MAN 


Bible. “I’m going to see bow you 
mark it,” be said. 

Tom’s Christian Endeavor Pledge lay 
in bis Bible, and Mr. Wynne opened at 
once to tbe reverse side. One glance at 
tbe round, boyisb writing gave bim tbe 
short sentence: “I promise that, God 
helping me, I will try to put Christ first 
in everything I do.” 

Mr. Wynne’s hand closed over Tom’s. 
“That is a great pledge,” he said. 

Tom was blushing painfully. He did 
not like to be thought better than he 
was. 

“I don’t believe I knew all that it 
meant when I wrote it down,” he said. 
“It was on a quiet Sunday afternoon in 
my room at the old home. I wanted to 
do right, and I thought out that little 
pledge as a means of deciding what is 
right. To put Christ first — that seemed 
to mean everything. If I did that I 
thought I would be on the safe side of 
every question. So I put down the 
pledge and signed it. I didn’t know it 

would be so hard to keep. I have not 

226 


FROM MIDDL E FI EL D 


kept it fully. I have sometimes fallen a 
long way short, I know. But I have 
kept on trying. I couldn’t bear to give 
up, now.” 

Bruce Wynne was one of those rare 
beings who know when not to talk. He 
sat in sympathetic silence now, his 
strong, brown hand still resting on 
Tom’s arm. 

“The people I had spent my life 
among were religious as a matter of 
course,” Tom began again. “I hadn’t 
known about anything else. When I 
came here, and got a glimpse of city 
life, it was all so different. My pledge 
seemed out of place. It was my fault, 
of course, that it seemed so. I hadn’t 
taken hold of it with my whole heart, 
though I thought I had. But it has 
grown a little easier to try to keep it, 
and — it has done me a great deal of 
good, I think.” 

“It has done others good for you to 
try to keep it. Just now it has set a 
sermon to stirring in me. Perhaps oth- 

227 


THE YOUNG MAN 


ers will take your motto, if the oppor- 
tunity is given to them. ’ ’ 

It was time for the prayer-meeting, 
and nothing further was said then. But 
on the next Sunday evening Mr. Wynne 
preached a ringing sermon from the 
text, “This one thing I do.” 

“Perhaps,” he said, “these words of 
Paul might be more definitely rendered, 
‘This one mark I set upon everything I 
do.’ To Paul, the service of Christ was 
life, not a mere incident of life. Liter- 
ally, for him to live was Christ. 

“Dare we say that the life of the 
average church-member of our day is 
even an heroic struggle toward the real- 
ization of this ideal? The world does 
not want a Cologne-water Christianity. 
There must be a self-forgetful effort for 
the supremacy of Christ in the individ- 
ual life before he can be supreme in 
society and among the nations of men, 
“I do not suppose that the average of 
church-membership is lower here than 
elsewhere, and I scarcely dare to hope 

that it is notably higher. But this I 

228 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


know: With one hundred men and 
women who would put this mark upon 
everything they do, who would put 
Christ, and his will and work, first in 
all their words and deeds, we could take 
this city for him, though Satan should 
call all his legions to oppose and over- 
throw. ” 

The simple message found a warm 
response. A corps of the young people 
was organized for personal work, and a 
great ingathering of souls followed. 

Sam Larkin and his wife were among 
the first to be reached, and none received 
a more cordial welcome from the mem- 
bers. 

“Yes, boys,” Sam announced to his 
companions at the noon-hour, “I’ve 
turned pious. That’s what you want to 
say, an’ I’d just as lieve say it for you. 
I may as well tell you first hand, that I 
ain’t ashamed on’t. I’ve joined Mister 
Tom’s church, too, which I would have 
said couldn’t be under no sort o’ cir- 
cumstances. I went there once to hear 
the Reverend Doctor What’s-his-name, 

229 


THE YOUNG MAN 


but be wasn’t onto bis job, an’ I knew it 
’fore I’d listened to biin ten minutes. 
You see, I wanted to know more about 
tbe place where tbe kittle Cbap has 
gone, an’ how my wife an’ me orto 
carry ourselves, so’s he won’t be ashamed 
to own his pa an’ ma up There. Maybe 
that was a sort o’ selfish way to look at 
it, but some of you that are here have 
lost little ’uns of your own, an’ I guess 
you know about what I mean. But 
what do you think Doctor What’s-his- 
name talked about? Why, I vow, he 
talked about a sunrise he seen one morn- 
in’, lookin’ out of his east winder! Just 
as if we didn’t all know what sunrises 
was like, except them that’s too fool 
lazy to git up an’ see! If the Doctor 
had to work as many hours as we do, 
he’d git to know a sunrise when he seen 
one, an’ not git so excited preachin’ 
about it. But the new parson is clear 
grit, and Mister Tom — I say, boys, 
what’s the matter with Mister Tom?” 

And there was no mistaking the 
heartiness of the voices which chorused 

230 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


in answer, “Mister Tom s all right!” 

Peter Floyd, coming out of the office 
at this moment, heard the chorus, and 
did not look ill-pleased. 

“And what’s the matter with Mis- 
ter Tom’s old uncle?” he remarked, 
jocosely. 

The men were so surprised that at 
first no one made a sound. Then, 
cheerily and simultaneously, they cried, 
“Mr. Floyd’s all right!” And the head 
of the establishment went away smiling. 

It chanced that, the same afternoon, 
Tom came into the office and said: 

“Uncle, when do you think you will 
be able to find a new superintendent?” 

“I’ve found one.” 

“Oh! When will he be here, then?” 

“He’s here now.” 

And it was evident from Peter Floyd’s 
face that he felt he had perpetrated the 
best joke of his life. 

231 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

HONEST CONFESSION. 



ERAED Feoyd, in the months 
since his return home, had 
devoted himself to art with 
something so like seriousness of purpose 
that it would have deceived one not 
accustomed to his changes of mood. 


Indeed, in a sense it was seriousness of 
purpose while it lasted. The trouble 
was that no one of his moods had ever 
been known to last. 

His mother exulted in “ the dear 
boy,” invited her friends in to see the 
pictures he painted, and spoke of his 
brilliant career as an established fact. 
His father sniffed, but tried not to ex- 
press his skepticism in a more open 
fashion. Tom alternated between ho|)e 
and fear, and wished that, if Gerald 
really were a genius, his gifts would 
manifest themselves in a more rational 
and practical way. 


232 


FROM ML DDL E FI EL D 


One thing seemed encouraging: Ger- 
ald had renewed his old-time friendship 
with Marjorie Deane. ‘.‘You know the 
price,” Marjorie had told him, gravely. 
“I cannot be friendly with Burt Had- 
ley’s friend.” 

“I suppose you want me to stick 
close to my immaculate cousin,” he 
answered, with something unpleasantly 
like a sneer. 

A flush slowly overspread Marjorie’s 
face. “I do not think you could do bet- 
ter,” she said. 

The blush and the tone were a reve- 
lation. 

“Marjorie!” Gerald cried, quickly. 
“You don’t mean it, do you? Forgive 
me! I wasn’t making fun of my cousin, 
though I had no idea it would hurt you 
so if I should. See here, Marjorie — 
listen to me. If I doubted all creation 
beside, if I believed that all other men 
were hypocrites and liars, if I felt that 
art were a cheat and life a farce, I would 
still swear that Tom Floyd is true, and 

233 


THE YOUNG MAN 


I would still avow it with my dying- 
breath!” 

“Thank you,” she said simply. And 
her lovely face had the look of an 
angel’s. 

No wonder they were friends after 
that. Gerald’s tone had in it the old 
witchery that never failed to charm > 
and yet it had seemed to Marjorie that 
there was a new note beneath, which 
she had never recognized before. 

Again they practiced duets together, 
and again they discussed matters belong- 
ing to the two great worlds of art and 
music. Tom, sitting beside them in the 
twilight, felt ashamed of his own igno- 
rance, and — O yes, for he was a very 
human Tom, after all — a trifle jealous of 
Gerald’s ability to make the most of 
what he knew. He need not have dis- 
turbed himself, for a beautiful girl is 
sometimes quite able to make correct 
discriminations, in spite of her shell- 
pink cheeks and our conception of her 
helplessness. 

One evening Tom and Gerald had 

234 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


spent the evening together at Marjorie’s 
home, and were returning, when Gerald 
broke out in one of those strange bursts 
of confidence which had, of late, been 
very infrequent . 

“Tom, I’ve been an awful fool,” he 
said. 

“We all have times of being that.” 

“Nonsense! Everybody makes mis- 
takes, but most mistakes can be undone. 
Mine can never be.” 

“Don’t say that Gerald. There is 
always the chance, if one has the mind 
to try.” 

“A chance! What kind of chance? 
A chance to be pointed at as a fellow 
who has failed at every good thing he 
ever touched? What kind of chance is 
there for a fellow who has humored him- 
self in every whim until he is twenty- 
four? Work? The kind of work that 
men do, the kind of work that takes 
trained brain and nerve and muscle — I 
hate. Home? You shrink away when 
I speak the word. You know you do, 
and you know you ought. You know 

235 


THE YOUNG MAN 


I ought to die rather than take a 
woman’s happiness into my hands. 
Society? Society petted me once, it 
kicks me and scoffs at me now. I heard 
Burt Hadley telling some fellows the 
other day the story of my escapade in 
Hooligan’s Hall — Burt Hadley, who 
gave me the drink that maddened me. 
I’m not saying that he or anyone else 
but myself is to blame. I’m only say- 
ing that from henceforth I’m to those 
fellows only the best possible joke — a 
poor Punch, playing on the street-cor- 
ners to afford them a few minutes’ 
amusement. What kind of chance is 
left for me?” 

The tone was fierce and hard. Tom 
slipped his hand through his cousin’s 
arm. 

“The chance to be a man,” he said, 
firmly. “A chance to win back a great 
deal that you’ve lost in the past, and 
save yourself from worse losses in the 
future.” 

“Win back! Much you understand, 
when you talk about my winning back 

236 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


what I’ve lost in the past. I’ve heard 
your preachers tell about it. They tell 
about a new life, and being born again, 
and all that sort of thing. It can’t be. 
It’s only a new life from the begin- 
ning — a new life without recollection or 
the consequences of the old, that could 
give one a chance to win back the past. 
They tell about repentance and restitu- 
tion. Can any amount of repentance 
blot out the memories that are burned 
into my very soul? Can it make me 
able to look myself in the face again, 
and feel that I am a man? Restitution! 
Can I restore time and opportunity, and 
the happiness of those I’ve made miser- 
able? Tom, it can’t be!” 

“I don’t believe memory can be blot- 
ted out, or that it ought to be. I believe 
every awful experience of the past ought 
to stay in your mind, to warn you every 
day that you live. I don’t suppose Paul 
ever lost sight of the face of Stephen, 
and I can imagine that the memory 
spurred him in his work until he felt he 
couldn’t rest. I don’t say you can be 

237 


THE YOUNG MAN 


what you might have been. You can’t 
get the years back, or undo the harm 
you have done to others. But that 
those wrongs be can’t righted is rather 
an argument against going on in wrong. 
Why should you have all the to-mor- 
rows added to the yesterdays? You can 
be a man again, and have a clean life 
and a good conscience — that I know. 
I’d have to give up all I hold sacred in 
order to doubt that.” 

“That’s because you have never £elt 
what I feel, and have never been where 
I have been. I’m glad you haven’t — 
that’s one thing I’ve got to be proud of. 
At my worst, I never tried to make 
you like myself. But you can’t under- 
stand.” 

“I think I can. At any rate, I can 
understand that going on isn’t going to 
make things better.” 

“Make things better? No, it won’t 
do that. Tommy boy, if I could be for 
just one hour a little child again, with a 
clean white soul and a faith in every- 
thing good, I would willingly lie down 

238 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


and die at the end of such an hour. 
You don’t know how I feel, and I can’t 
tell you. But you are a good fellow, 
Tommy boy. It is a comfort to think 
there is one such in the world.” 

Tom felt his cousin’s soft, girlish 
hand against his cheek. He was moved 
by the caress, and still more by the 
earnest tone. He feared to speak lest 
he should blunder, and, indeed, it would 
have been hard for him to speak at all. 

But Gerald’s next words were light 
enough, and Tom thought he had been 
mistaken in his supposition that his 
cousin was growing serious. After all, 
Gerald was a creature of moods, and 
there was no telling which would be 
the next to sway him. 

239 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XXV. 

MRS. FLOYD MAKES A DISCOVERY. 

NE evening Mrs. Floyd prevailed 
upon her husband to go with 
her and Nora to hear a prima 
donna of world-wide fame. Mr. Floyd 
was not fond of music, but he had a 
sense of obligation to the wishes of his 
family, and some desire to carry a brave 
front before society, and so he meekly 
submitted. It must be admitted that his 
wife’s appreciation of the music was not 
much stronger than his own; neverthe- 
less, she found much to enjoy that did 
not appeal to him especially. Her opera 
glasses were invaluable, and if they 
were turned toward the first gallery 
oftener than toward the stage, certainly 
that was her own affair and not the 
prima donna’s. 

‘‘Marjorie is in the second row,” she 
announced, between numbers. “She is 
looking remarkably well to-night. 

240 



FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


Really, I never saw any other brown- 
haired person to whom violet was par- 
ticularly becoming. Her escort has his 
head turned toward the singer, and I 
cannot make out who he is. One of her 
cousins most likely. She is very' fas- 
tidious. ” 

The orchestra started up again, and 
Mrs. Floyd did not then pursue her in- 
vestigation further. Rater in the even- 
ing, however, between the two parts of 
the concert, she raised her glass again, 
and fell back into her seat in sheer 
amazement. 

“Nora!” she gasped, “it’s Thomas!” 

“Reading the orchestra?” questioned 
Nora, innocently. “/ see . Of course 
it is. I supposed everybody in the hall 
knew that!” . 

And Mr. Peter Floyd so far forgot 
himself, the occasion, and the dignity of 
his family, as to chuckle audibly. 

“No, no! with Marjorie. It is our — 
it is your cousin Thomas!” 

“Well, here are your smelling-salts,” 
Nora reminded her, sweetly. 

16 241 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“I never was so surprised in my life.” 

“I have been, often.” 

“But it is very unusual for her to ap- 
pear in public with a — a gentleman. ’ ’ 

“I don’t know what you call ‘public.’ 
She goes to prayer-meeting with Tom 
every week, and to church on Sunday 
nights. I don’t know what could be 
more in the usual way than for her to 
be seen with him.” 

“Nora!” It was the old reproving 
tone. “And you never mentioned it to 
me! I think you should have remem- 
bered that your cousin is staying in our 
house, and that we are in a certain sense 
responsible for him.” 

“Why, mamma, I didn’t mean to be 
secretive, but Tom is such a particular 
darling that I don’t like to seem to 
know more about his affairs than he 
chooses to tell me.” 

“You were always short-sighted, 
though I have no doubt in this case you 
meant well. You seem to fail altogether 
to see that this — ah — notice on Marjorie’s 
part may lead to some very unpleasant 

242 


FROM MI DDL E FI EL D 


complications. Tom is quite unsophis- 
ticated, and will be likely to think she 
is serious.” 

“I don’t know what he thinks, as I 
have said. I would certainly think her 
so, from what I have seen. Indeed, I 
can’t imagine Marjorie’s being anything 
but serious about a serious matter. But 
then, you know, I’m almost as unsophis- 
ticated as Tom himself.” 

Mrs. Floyd gasped. “You do not be- 
lieve she would consider the question of 
marrying Tom ? ’ ’ 

“I certainly believe she would if she 
should still need to. But I rather think 
she has given the subject full considera- 
tion already.” 

“Nora! You cannot think that they 
are engaged?” 

“I’m not thinking anything for sure 
until I am told. But it certainly looks 
that way.” 

“After the opportunities she has had, 
and the way she has treated our Gerald!” 

“I think she treats Gerald very nicely. 
He goes there with Tom, and seems to 

243 


THE YOUNG MAN 


approve mightily of the whole situa- 
tion.” 

This time it really seemed that the 
smelling-salts would be in demand. But 
presently Mrs. Floyd rallied arid began 
again. 

“You seem to quite fail to see,” she 
said, “that if what you say is true — I 
cannot fully believe it as yet — it will cer- 
tainly bring about very painful results. 
Mrs. Deane is very exclusive and partic- 
ular. She will not tolerate such a 
thought for a moment.” 

“I don’t know how that is,” remarked 
Nora, nonchalantly, “but she seems to 
have no difficulty at all in Tom. She 
doesn’t call him Thomas, I assure you. 
She is a great deal too well acquainted 
with him for that. Fast night, when I 
ran in, he was threading dozens of 
needles with her embroidery silk, and 
she remarked, in the most matter of 
course way, that it was Tom’s regular 
business to keep her supplied with 
threaded needles, so she might not be 
hindered in her work.” 


244 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


While his wife was recovering her 
breath, Peter Floyd struck in. “I don’t 
see why you make such a fuss about the 
matter,” he said. “Tom is good enough 
for any girl, if he is my nephew. He 
hasn’t got the society strut, but he’s got 
sense about him, and that counts for a 
good deal more in the long run, accord- 
ing to my notion.” 

“I have nothing against Thomas. 
Considering his opportunities, he cer- 
tainly makes a very creditable appear- 
ance. But he is poor, and it is certainly 
the merest childish folly for him to think 
of marrying.” 

“You married me when I was poor.” 

“You were certain not to stay poor. 
Any one could have seen that.” 

She did not say that she would not 
have married him had she not seen it 
herself, and certainly it would have 
been unfair to draw this inference from 
her words. 

“O mamma,” broke in Nora, “it 
would be a shame to keep Tom from 
marrying just because he’s poor. Why, 

245 


THE YOUNG MAN 


lie’s just the darlingest home-boy that 
ever lived. I suppose his mother has 
taught him how to be that. Can’t you 
just imagine him putting up curtains, 
and manufacturing box-couches, and 
doing wonders in flower-gardening in a 
back yard four feet square? He was 
just made for that sort of thing. And 
Marjorie has been to cooking-school, and 
she knows how to sew beautifully. She 
can make her own gowns, and even trim 
her hats, if it is necessary. I think it 
would be a great pity to spoil such fun 
by having them stupidly rich, with 
nothing to do but to take the things that 
were made for them, and find fault with 
them afterward.” 

“What a nonsensical mood you are in 
to-night,” was her mother’s only an- 
swer. 

But she watched Tom and Marjorie 
narrowly for the remainder of the even- 
ing, and though she did not express 
herself again, her mind seemed to be 
busy with a new idea. 

The truth was, Mrs. Floyd, awe-in- 
246 


FROM MI DDL E FI ELD 


spiring as slie herself seemed, had always 
stood the least bit in awe of Mrs. Deane. 
Now, if what Nora guessed was true, 
there must be equality between them. 

So it came that when a friend asked if 
she might congratulate her upon an en- 
gagement between her nephew and Miss 
Deane, she drew herself up just a little 
more loftily than usual, as she answered, 
“It is quite too early for congratula- 
tions. But my nephew is a most ex- 
emplary young man, and I must say 
that any woman whom he chooses may 
feel herself honored.” 

247 


THE YOUNG MAN 


CHAPTER XXVI. 



A HAPPY HOME-COMING. 

It was a perfect day in June, and 
the scent of roses was every- 
where. The old farmhouse in 
Middlefield was in festival array, for 
Tom was to bring home his bride. 

There had been a modest wedding at 
the Deane home, when the Floyds had 
had one brief vision of Tom’s lovely 
wife, and of his radiant happiness. 
Marjorie had charmed Baby Walter, who 
still chattered about her, and fastidious 
Mrs. Deane had pronounced Mrs. Floyd 
“an exquisitely womanly woman — just 
the kind of mother you would expect 
our Tom to have.” 

“But that isn’t knowing Marjorie,” 
Tom had told his father and mother. 
“She is such a home-body that one 
must know her at home to appreciate 
her. After we get our little house in 
order, I’ll bring her to the farm for 

248 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


a glorious outing, and let you see what 
kind of a daughter you’ve got.” 

Most people would have made some 
allowance for a young husband’s enthu- 
siasm, but Mrs. Floyd did not. It never 
occurred to her that Tom’s wife could be 
other than exceptional. 

Nora had come to the farm two days 
before. She had taken a great fancy to 
her cousin Hester, and had volunteered 
her services “on the reception commit- 
tee,” as she expressed it. 

“You’ll never know how lovely Tom 
and Marjorie are unless I come and tell 
you,” she explained. “They are so 
modest that they never speak of it, and 
other people are so busy imposing on 
them that they have no time. I’m the 
only person who makes a business of 
sounding their praises.” 

Mrs. Floyd, who had heretofore seen 
Nora only now and then, was surprised 
that she had never liked her better. 
Heretofore she had thought her bitter 
and sarcastic. Now she seemed gener- 

249 


THE YOUNG MAN 


ous and full of interest in those about 
her. 

“She’s regularly jolly,” asserted Ted- 
dy, who had groaned over the prospect 
of a visit from his city cousin, and com- 
plained that there wouldn’t be room to 
have her airs and his feet in the house 
at the same time. “I never saw a 
woman before that it was any fun to go 
fishing with. I wouldn’t refuse to go 
when she asked me, but I supposed she 
would giggle all the time, like the rest 
of ’em, and spoil everything. She 
didn’t, though. She went right to busi- 
ness, as if she knew how, and her catch 
was almost as good as mine. I tell you, 
she’s the kind. She’s got the grit to 
saw off an arm, if it’s got to be done. 
I wouldn’t be a bit afraid to trust her.” 

Tom and Marjorie came on Saturday 
night. Mr. Floyd drove them over from 
the station, and Nora and Teddy fol- 
lowed in the light wagon with their 
trunk. It was a fine procession, and 
the town came out to see it pass. 

A delicious supper was waiting, with 

250 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


some of the fish caught by Nora and 
Teddy as a prominent attraction. Mrs. 
Floyd had walked around the table a 
dozen times to make sure that all was in 
order, and, for the first time in her life, 
had wished for fine napery. 

“Not that I think it will make any 
real difference to Marjorie,” she told 
herself. “It’s only for Tom’s sake.” 

Certainly Marjorie seemed to miss 
• nothing. Tom was quite right in say- 
ing she was at her best in the home. 
Her girlish dignity was very charming 
in society, but by no means so charming 
as the refined mirthfulness and sense of 
humor which found full play at the fire- 
side. 

“She’s ever so pretty,” admitted 
Teddy, a trifle reluctantly, “and she 
does know how to say just exactly what 
ought to be said. But Nora’s got the 
grit about her, and I still stick up for 
Nora.” 

On Sunday they all went to the little 
church at the village, the church where 
Tom had made the confession of his 

251 


THE YOUNG MAN 


faith and had been baptized, and where 
he had made his first trembling efforts to 
speak to others of his Master. It was 
a sweet moment to him when he sat 
with his wife beside him at the com- 
munion table, and thought of the unex- 
pected joys and opportunities which had 
fallen to his lot. Never before had his 
heart been so humble. Never before 
had it held such high and adventurous 
resolves. 

That afternoon, for the first time, he 
told Marjorie of his pledge, and of what 
it had meant to him. 

“Somehow, I couldn’t tell you be- 
fore,” he said. “It seemed like saying 
I was good, and I knew I wasn’t. But 
here, where I took it first, I thought 
you would understand.” 

She put her hand into his. “It is a 
beautiful pledge,” she said, “and we will 
try to keep it together. That shall be 
the ideal of the home we make — to keep 
it always a home where Christ is first.” 

As the evening settled down they all 
sat on the porch together, Marjorie with 

252 


FROM MI DDL E FI ELD 

Walter on her lap, Tom at his mother’s 
feet, and Nora beside the loyal Teddy. 
Presently Marjorie started the noble old 
hymn, 

“ Sun of my soul, thou Savior dear,” 

and the others joined her, Hester’s firm, 
beautiful soprano rising above the rest. 

“Hester ought to have music lessons,” 
Tom said. “I wish she could come and 
stay with us next winter, and see what' a 
good teacher could do for her voice.” 

There was a moment’s silence. Even 
a good son does not know what it means 
to a mother to be parted from her child. 

“If we can spare her,” she said, at 
length, “I am sure it would be a good 
thing for her to go.” 

Tom clasped her hand impulsively. 
“It’s too bad to take her away,” he said. 
“I wasn’t thinking, for the moment, 
that she is your only girl.” 

“Except the baby whose body has lain 
these twelve years on the hillside,” she 
answered softly. “Eittle Alice is the 
one of our children who will never leave 
us.” 


253 


THE YOUNG MAN 


The others were talking among them- 
selves, and could not hear these words. 
But to Tom they meant much, remem- 
bering, as he did, how reticent his 
mother had always been concerning the 
things of her inner life. 

“Dear mother,” he said, tenderly, 
“was it so hard for you when I went 
away?” 

“It seemed like taking my very life. 
I know now that I was selfish, but I 
didn’t realize it then. I thought it was 
only because I feared temptations for 
you.” 

“I think it was for the most part that. 
You were wiser than I, and saw the 
danger I didn’t and couldn’t see.” 

“But I should have had more faith. I 
should have believed that God was 
stronger than any of us. It was surely 
right for you to go. If you had not 
gone, what would have become of 
Gerald?” 

“I’m not sure that Gerald is safe, 
even yet. To be sure, I believe he is 
honestly trying to live a new life. He 

254 


FROM MIDDLEFIELD 


lias taken hold of work in earnest, and 
though Marjorie, who knows a great 
deal more about it than I do, says he 
will never paint a great picture, yet it 
is something for him to have anything 
to do that he is willing to stick to and 
give his best to. He may get tired of it 
all, but he hasn’t so far, and that is en- 
couraging. He is as happy over an 
order as if his bread and butter depended 
upon it, and I think his father is secret- 
ly as well pleased as he. The truth is, 
uncle has been trying for years to stop 
loving Gerald, and nature has all the 
time been too strong for him. Now, 
when he feels that he is safe in loving 
him a little, nature of course takes de- 
light in asserting herself. I cannot say 
that I feel safe about Gerald. One can- 
not willfully go through fire and come 
out unscathed. I fancy that his life will 
be an alternation of inspirations and 
lapses. But his face is set toward the 
right now, and while it is we must 
never give up. He has Nora beside 
him, and she will never let go.” 


THE YOUNG MAN 


“What a fine woman Nora is making, 
his mother said, looking admiringly at 
the vivacious face opposite. 

Her look of admiration was reflected 
in Tom’s face. 

“Isn’t she, though?’- he said, with 
enthusiasm. “I used to think Nora 
wasn’t enough like you, or — ” he 
laughed merrily — “like Marjorie. But 
the woman is all there, and, if she lives 
very long in this world, thousands will 
thank God because of her.” 

Nora had heard nothing of the words, 
but she caught the laugh, and her own 
rang out gaily. 

“What a model couple Tom and Mar- 
jorie are!” she said. “Here they are, in 
the very middle of their honeymoon, 
and Tom is assiduously courting his 
mother, while Marjorie, here, has eyes 
and ears for no one but Walter. They 
deserve to have their statues on a monu- 
ment, as a reward to them and an in- 
centive to other young people to behave 
themselves like rational beings, rather 

256 


FROM MI DDL EFIELD 


than like candidates for the idiotic 
asylum.” 

“I hope you have observed them, and 
will know how to conduct yourself under 
similar circumstances,” said Mr. Floyd, 
with a clumsy attempt at humor. 

“I? Oh, I am going to be an M. D., 
you know. I don’t suppose I shall ever 
marry, unless — ” a fit of repentance 
seemed suddenly to overtake her — “un- 
less I should encounter a young man 
from Middlefield, with a heart as big as 
a hemisphere, and a perfect genius for 
other people’s business.” 

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